I keep seeing people asking what has happened to the game. Why does the content feel like copy/paste? Why is Eureka...what it is? Why isn't the Dev Team trying something new?
The answer is money. The money we pay into FFXIV in sub fees doesn't go back into FFXIV. It doesn't make sense to expect that it would, to be honest. Don't you think Blizzard funded the development of Overwatch and Diablo III at least in part with funds from WoW sub fees?
Square isn't in a great place right now ( https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/damie...-million-loss/ ) and is likely looking to cut costs. They already have a team working on our next expansion, certainly, because that is likely to sell well enough, and doesn't require a large investment. No new tech is being developed for it, the servers and engine are already there. Other then new overworld maps, an expansion is basically just like getting 5x patches worth of content at once.
Without funding, what the Dev Team can do is limited. With the company losing money right now, the Men In Suits are not going to look kindly on scraping ready-to-go content. I'd imagine, based on player reaction, the Dev Team would love to re-work some of those ideas, but they can't.
Something we forget is they also can't directly come out and say "We've seen the players hate this, and want to re-work it, but we can't because money". Even if they hated they way it came it out, in interviews, they are going to say "Yes, wait for what we've made. It is so exciting!" Why? Because it is their JOB to make the game and company look good at all times.
This is something much more ingrained in Japanese culture versus Western. We are used to things like actors saying that their new movie was a trainwreck to film, or game devs saying a product was rushed and blaming the publisher. That just isn't how they roll in Japan.
So, TLDR: The current state of our game is due to economic realities, not that the Dev team doesn't listen. Money from FFXIV is going to prop up the development of AAA titles that SE NEEDS to get out the door in order to stay open.
The answer to the question everyone has been asking.
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11-12-2018, 02:54 AMMatthiasSThe answer to the question everyone has been asking.
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11-12-2018, 03:07 AMMagic-Mal
It doesn't help that FFXIV lost 220,000 Western subs(NA and EU) since January 2018. That's a lot of money. 3.3M a month...
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11-12-2018, 03:12 AMInkstainedGwyn
The irony is that by putting us on a F2P treadmill, they're actually losing money. I would have preferred the "same old hum-drum content cycle" to this nonsense, and they would have saved money and (likely) hemorrhaged fewer subscriptions. People always complained that they were bored, but it wasn't anywhere near the volume of dissatisfaction that each new Eureka zone has gotten. Even if Eureka had been a one-time "failure" like the Diadem (which I enjoyed far more than Eureka), people would have eventually forgotten about it and come back when the new raids and content hit. Dragging it out over the course of the post-4.0 patch cycle is just compounding the losses.
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11-12-2018, 03:15 AMLastelli
Sure, cutting the funds of a subscription based game is a very good idea. That is genius! It's not like they will lose money if people quit the game because the quality of new content has gone down, after all.
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11-12-2018, 03:24 AMVaer
Wouldn't be the first time. It's not like XIV 1.0 was doing that well either, probably had to be propped up by funds from somewhere else when they went through that period where they were probably barely making any money/remaking the game.
They copy/paste when the company is doing well, too. It's more like they don't want to take a risk when the money is somewhat stable. Don't fix what's broken and all that. Yeah, they sometimes lose 10-20% of their active characters every patch, but they regain some when they release a patch. It's probably within expectations, the retention rate seems pretty good to me, plus we don't know how much they are making from the mog station. Might make up for some of the lost characters that drop out 1 month after a major patch, but then come back 2 months later when the next major patch is released.
Even the most popular MMO in the world has retention issues especially after an expansion launch that balloons the number for a couple of months until the "MMO tourists" leave. Stormblood which is basically copy/paste sold pretty good those first couple months, so they're probably going to do the same thing again. -
11-12-2018, 03:33 AMGemina
I've attempted to counter arguments revolving around the financial state of SE. Some people seem to think SE is made out of money, and only sees things like (# of subs * monthly fee) + cashshop = unlimited funding. This is hardly the case, and the Final Fantasy franchise has quite literally kept their whole rig above water for years now. If FF plummets, so does SE baring another hailmary success, which they are also known for.
We players devoted to SE are almost like a cult. Their games have brought us a profound amount of joy and memories, frustration and tears, and has created communities. Despite this success, they are not as successful as some of the other gaming development companies out there. Not even close. They've overcome a lot of challenges trying to stay true to their culture while appealing to the western audience. They have more than compensated in regards to this.
Us westerners though. We don't care, do we? We pay for a product, and we expect on-time delivery of quality material. 'nuff said. From a business standpoint, I suppose that's fair; as is delivering reskinned content so long as it is of the same quality as the previous. I definitely think we could be more understandable instead of standing around shaking a finger. But along with reskinned content, quality has also gone down. And I also believe this isn't how they roll in Japan, if we want to tie things to culture. -
11-12-2018, 03:42 AMKurandoPerhaps internationally, but locally in Japan Dragon Quest is actually bigger than FF. In the off chance everything goes to crap and FF is no longer the money bringer, SE could probably just return to its home market with more DQ installments. Although in recent years DQ has found much more fame in the West, so that could be their saving grace, not to mention other titles like Nier have done really well.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gemina
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11-12-2018, 04:01 AMDeceptusThis is 100% absolute rubbish. Even at 600,000 subs (which is conservative), that's $7.8 Million a month. Almost 100 Million a year.Quote:
Originally Posted by MatthiasS
FFXIV is their cash cow and they should treat it's paying customers better.
They're not as successful because they're constantly making poor management decisions. Greenlighting massive, expensive projects only to cancel them mid project (FF Versus), barely advertising what they do put out, and then setting expectations so high and not meeting them (Tomb Raider anyone?)Quote:
Originally Posted by Gemina
Creating new in house engines(read: expensive) instead of using tried and tested engines. Then scrapping the new engine and going to the tried and tested engines they should have been using from the start. -
11-12-2018, 04:14 AMXaufrom what i read somewhere on this forums some days ago(don't remember where) someone claimed what SE gets far more from their mobile titles than FFXIVQuote:
Originally Posted by Deceptus
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11-12-2018, 04:33 AMGeminaPossibly. I remember some early installments of DQ, and really enjoyed it back in the day. Would be nice if it could gain more popularity internationally along with continued FF success. That would definitely go a long way to increasing their budget.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kurando
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11-12-2018, 04:58 AMGeminaThey've made questionable and even outright bad decisions, sure. Who hasn't? They've also shown to have the aptitude to make said mistakes and learn from them. FFXIV is host of tried and true, and trial and error. The franchise wouldn't be successful at all if it wasn't doing the majority of things right. While everything you said is true, it should also be said that SE delivers a product that has competitors. Strong competitors. That is why I mentioned the SE faithful as a cult, because it's such a small population in comparison to say, the first-person-shooter playerbase.Quote:
Originally Posted by Deceptus
Of course, this is all the more reason to not make the mistakes that SE does. They don't have the same amount of leisure to allow projects to fail like some other companies out there, which is why the seemingly dart-throwing method to finding solutions needs to stop. -
11-12-2018, 05:47 AMMicahZerrshiaWe are consumers and SE is anything but an indie developer. We don't need to be understanding, esp with a game that has been out as long as XIV has, by now they should have been able to develop multiple kinds of content as well as worked the bugs out of them. But telling a playerbase to be understanding to a multimillion dollar company who hasn't done anything innovative with a game outside of how they spin the same ol same and dodge any sort of reasonable questions does not deserve sympathy, East or West, from people who are paying exorbitated amounts of money considering its a game with a box cost and a sub, as well as the other things they wanna charge us for.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gemina
When you make an MMO or any game there should be a period of understanding by the playerbase post launch to get bugs worked out and such, but certainly not this far out and certainly not for a company of this size. You are basically saying that we should all be apologists and white knights and that is even more unhealthy to a game and a game company than being critical. And I believe one of the reasons the playerbase is so critical is because they refuse to open any sort of dialog with us. All Yoshida does is answer pre-approved questions that make XIV sound like the most amazing game ever or simply refuses to answer.
A game developer in 2018 should be able to answer questions that have been asked for years instead of hiding behind a curtain and acting like everything is fine and dandy when clearly its not. -
11-12-2018, 07:16 AMRamessesInteresting... can you cite a source for that? I need to compare that with something else I read.Quote:
Originally Posted by Magic-Mal
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11-12-2018, 07:48 AMMagic-MalIn the "Please Stop Making Eureka" thread. Page 21. First post, my post. It's a series of screenshots of the LuckyBancho censuses from January 27th to November 3rdQuote:
Originally Posted by Ramesses
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11-12-2018, 07:50 AMPaladinleedsTo help Ramesses along his way, here is a permalink to said postQuote:
Originally Posted by Magic-Mal
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11-12-2018, 08:01 AMSoraki-Muppe
SE is not an indie company, they should support FFXIV so that it can bring in more money. Not strip it of resources until more and more players leave. which ironically will result in there being less money to strip away in the future.
5.1 will be when I decide to stay or leave, one patch into a new expansion will show how they move in quality and quantity.
If this current trend continues I will vote with my wallet, I will decide to use my money elsewhere just like it seems SE has decided to use way to much of our sub money elsewhere. -
11-12-2018, 08:02 AMRamessesAwesome, thank you... I needed that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Magic-Mal
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11-12-2018, 08:02 AMBourne_EndeavorWhat exactly have they learned? Kingdom Hearts 3 may finally get its release come January after spending over a decade in developmental hell, FFVII: Remake has currently taken up residence in said hell, they just lost 30M due to their horrendously poor handling of FFXV and its subsequent DLCs and are still too damn stubborn to license Unreal 4/Unity when their attempts at an in-house engine have been embarrassing. Square Enix is a company that practically underlines the definition of insanity. They make good games, but they stumble all over themselves just to get there.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gemina
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11-12-2018, 08:55 AMLiam_Harper
Blizzard are under the same issue tbh. The suits are good at squeezing profit out of things, but have no concept of what a good or bad game is and don't consider what earned the company that monopolizing place in the market in the first place. Things like the first 2 WoW expansions or FF7-10 were created by gamers, with a strong passion for gaming who wanted to tell epic stories and share epic gaming experiences. And that's what customers truly loved and why the games became massive successes.
Game companies today are too focused on how to entice the player to spend, how to trigger our addictions or how to trick us into spending more than we normally would. This works insanely well short-term but has no long term future. The company gets a bad reputation and starts to dwindle and relies even more heavily on monetization and microtransaction which only speeds the decline.
The suits in charge need to stop and give their developers free reign. Imagine a dev team that were allowed to upgrade the servers, the network, work indepth on combat, story, customization and graphics and given the time needed to test and release a fully finished product. It'd be a massive success.
I don't feel the age of MMO gaming is drawing to a close. I feel there's actually a big opening in the market right now for a passionate teams of gamers who love making games to step up and create an entirely new game made for gamers and not profit. They'd sweep the market right now. -
11-12-2018, 09:27 AMMagic-MalI forgot we could do that..Quote:
Originally Posted by Paladinleeds
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11-12-2018, 09:29 AMEnlaThis. Anyone who questions why SE is having money issues needs only look at their handling of FFXV, the FF7 reboot, Kingdom Hearts 3, the Hitman reboot, and even the Tomb Raider reboot as you said to see that they practically bleed money on inconsequential shit. The first Tomb Raider reboot was considered a financial failure when it came out because it /only/ pushed four million copies in it's first few months. A number most other AAA games would kill for, but far below their decided estimates which at the time only games like CoD could hit. Hitman on the other hand was sold as piece meal because they couldn't push out the full game all at once or some other excuse I'd have to dig for. Though if I recall it was a joint matter of funds and wanting to milk the rest of the game as DLC.Quote:
Originally Posted by Deceptus
This is a pattern with SE. They overly invest in things that ultimately don't matter, sometimes scrap the project halfway through, or even just let the team meander about without any direction until it becomes clear that the money is finally running out. FF7's remake is currently mired in a sea of unease from the various rumors that have been bouncing around about it and it seems to be slowly turning into the same development hell that plagued XV. Only time will tell if they can get themselves out of this hole or if they sink. -
11-12-2018, 09:44 AMShinMetsu
But at least all the Mog Station revenue is going straight back into FFXIV's servers, so that we can have better and more (EU) datacenters.
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11-12-2018, 01:12 PMDestatihttps://media.giphy.com/media/a9PEl27Q8eSMU/giphy.gifQuote:
Originally Posted by ShinMetsu
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11-12-2018, 02:01 PMInkstainedGwynYou forgot the /s.Quote:
Originally Posted by ShinMetsu
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11-12-2018, 04:04 PMFloortank
Considering Eureka is an optional sidequest, it represents 100x more content than was in previous relic chains, and is more involved than Hildibrand.
People want to construe Eureka as a main, centerpiece attraction, because that's how they perceive the relics, but it's NOT, and they're not, central to this game.
Main content = savages, primals, 24 man raids, MSQs. That is where the money and energy goes, because it is main content.
That we get four whole zones and three (possibly four?) entire subsystems designed for a completely optional content is evidence of boom development, not bust development. -
11-12-2018, 04:37 PMIscahExcept for the fact that (to my understanding) resources had to be diverted away from central content such as dungeons to work on Eureka instead.Quote:
Originally Posted by Floortank
I signed up to the game because I enjoyed playing dungeons. Because I played the free trial and discovered that contrary to my previous understanding of MMOs being about going out into a field area and killing lots of monsters, it was a style of gameplay I actually enjoyed. I also liked that you are automatically grouped with players instead of having to seek out a party.
Now here's the new, exciting gameplay of Eureka... where you go out into a field and kill lots of monsters. And really need to organise a party to do it successfully.
This isn't the game I wanted to play, and yet I "have" to play it for hours on end if I want to obtain something that has previously been acquired via core gameplay. In my case, I'm not so interested in the relic weapon, but the fate of the island of Val has been a hanging question from the MSQ right back in post-ARR.
If nothing else, that sets Eureka apart - no other "optional gameplay with a different play style" has story gated behind it. PVP and the Diadem are 'just there', with no need to pursue them if you're not interested, and no sense of missing out on anything important as a latecomer who can't easily access Diadem missions. -
11-12-2018, 05:26 PMKinazuThen why during the whole announcement of Stormblood, during the FanFests and the interviews, Eureka was being sold as a main attraction of Stormblood. If it's as "optional" as you said it should have been, why did they hype it up so much? Why did they sell it as if it's part of the main content in Stormblood?Quote:
Originally Posted by Floortank
Sure, it's not a raid nor a dungeon. But the amount of hyping they did and how eager they were for us to try Eureka, it doesn't feel like it was just optional. It feels like it was part of the main content in Stormblood.
Even though the Relic is optional in all expansion, that doesn't mean it's truly "side content". Considering the Relic is meant for the casual group, to slowly obtain a weapon that'll be on-par (or better) than the Savage weapon in due time. We've had Relics in all expansions, I fail to see how a Relic can be optional if we expect it to be there.
I completely agree that the Relic weapon itself is optional, but to consider the Relic quests side content, I wouldn't say so, especially after all the hyping up they did, it's surely one of the main courses of Stormblood. -
11-12-2018, 05:40 PMRiardon
XIV is limited not only by a fixed relatively conservative budget but by its own technical weaknesses (poor engine) and SE's own internal culture.
Whenever the team tries to do something more they always bump onto some of these walls.
I still think that the upper SE management don't really realize that XIV can grow even further and they still treat it like a small game that just survived the meteor apocalypse of 1.0.
XIV needs more effort and money to avert some of these limiting factor.
Its graphics engine is one of them. Yoshi mentioned that in a recent interview.
In order to make more "new" and more exciting things the graphics engine needs to be revised and updated to allow more gameplay features and systems.
It also doesn't help that the game still supports 32bit archaic system and is limited by 2GB of RAM. (still no TP numbers, small amount of visible maximum objects/PC/NPC etc)
The game can be better if SE takes it more seriously and start investing on it more instead of funding crapware or purring money on Nomura's ad infinitum development projects. -
11-12-2018, 11:05 PMCrystenI'd only disagree in the sense that XIV is not the only cash cow here - Brave Exvius on mobile churns out more money than XIV does.Quote:
Originally Posted by Deceptus
That said, completely agreed here - if SE stopped giving unrealistic expectations and budgets to their western titles and stopped giving hacks like Tetsuya Nomura projects to manage nstead of just letting him draw pretty pictures, the company might be in a better position.
You cannot sustain a business model when your big projects (FFXV, KH3, FFVII remake) are taking nigh decades to develop!
Their project management is abysmal at best and it's hurting them immensely. -
11-12-2018, 11:49 PMDragoon4life
One word. Eureka. They pooled so many resources/time/energy into side content or relic if your picky. And it has been so negatively Received it’s considered to be a massive failure on their part for the game as a whole. Every raid is trying to live up to Bahamut but never will. Eureka was make or break, and man did it break. Pagos left a really bad taste in a large number of ppl. Eureka could have been amazing but when Devs punish players and refuse to fix bad content this is what happens.
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11-13-2018, 01:28 AMGun-Cat
I think a lot of people forget that there is a paralel universe with China that has its own istance of XIV running where people pay by the hour to play.
Honestly, the cynic in me wants to blame the extreme grind and randomness (gatcha you might call it) of the latest relic content on the fact that the very same stuff works extremely well for mobile and a huge chunk of the playerbase (in China pays) by the hour. Granted, I have no idea if the chinese caught up with the patch cycle to us or if they are still in HW.