How will new players perceive this game? (A pessimistic outlook)

[darkstarpoet1]

that is true. but at the same time that ruins gathering jobs for a fairly long period by making them unprofitable. And from what i gathered, gathering jobs are meant to be a "main" job in the game. Further vendor items for crafting and use only create an inflationary cap. Like once the prices of goods exceeds the price at NPCs people will buy from NPC vendors, some money will exit the economy, and it will be viable for players to sell goods just under the NPC prices once again, in which case money will stop exiting. As a result the economy would average out at that point.
Put another way, 1 week you would be buying stuff from NPCs, then the next week from the wards, then the next week from NPCs, then the next week from wards, etc. NPC prices will determine the "limits" of monetary expansion, but it will not fix an inflated currency.

And that will still make it very difficult for new players to catch up because NPC items are overpriced on purpose.

One solution i can think of would be to release really good items that are sold by vendors, or have a dynamis-weapon type thing and sell the currency at vendors. But the problem still remains that a lot of people who got like 10-20 mil at the start and quit temporarily will come back and constantly cause inflationary spikes.

Also on a note: I think SE attempted to drain gil from FFXI via NPCs in CoP for end game gear. It didn't seem to work well and again, the economy didn't fix itself until there were mass bans. Doesn't mean its impossible to do, just probably difficult.

i do see what you mean by it will not fix inflation, but it would level it out. i'll use the cost of buffalo skins on my server for example.

a few months ago a buffalo skin you could purchase in wards for 8k. by the time you bought the dye and chips you could make sell them for 8k each for dyed buffalo leather. you would make a decent profit and the next crafter would make a decent profit off it when they resold the next item in wards.

now the same skin sells for 20k. that increased 12k per skin or 3k per leather however you want to look at it now has the cost of what was 8k for a buffalo leather gone up to around 12k. this also turns around to an increase for the crafter that was buying the skin to make the next item.

if the npc has the skin for a reasonable price say 8-10k which is what the skin was and it is an easy item to get then it would cut the cost of that item in wards by half. we mention the gathering classes, but in most cases alot of the inflation and price gouging has came from the gathering class and as long as raw materials continue to increase the crafting classes will have to continue to raise prices to match.

[Alzelia]

I agree they should tax trades as well. However from my perspective as a 2 month new player, Gil wasn't hard to come by at all in the beginning. I also have found the behest system to be great for parties as I always join the other behest players in a party. I have also found the economy to be pretty stable. I just want to say I agree with your points. I disagree with your view (I'm an optimist)

[Azurymber]

I'm a new player, been playing a week.
2 my guess you truely never did quests in ffxi. That game had tons of pointless quests that had nothing to do with the story. BUT they are part of the lore you learn about the npcs and how their day to day lives pan out. Much like the moss quest in ffxi or the cornette quest.

there were 2 types of quests in FFXI. There were ones that were really simple "bring item" quests which helped to generate fame + originally when they were released, were good sources of gil for new players. There were only a -few- of these.
Then there were the many in-depth quests with semi-cutscenes, deep stories, interesting characters, lore, emotion, etc. Many of these were quests lines, and many resulted in cool items that you could only get from completing a long quest line.

FFXIV's sidequests have almost no lore, no memorable characters, no deep stories, no emotion, none have any cutscenes. They are mostly pointless little side stories that could be stuck into -any- game, and very rarely have any depth.
They are almost ALL either "run to point X and kill mobs" or "go talk to people".
There is -no- comparison to what existed in FFXI. If the quests were good to level up on or to get good items from then they might have some merit. But they aren't.

[Alzelia]

Deeper quest lines with cut scenes take more time to develop. Don't worry, they will come.

[Azurymber]

I agree they should tax trades as well. However from my perspective as a 2 month new player, Gil wasn't hard to come by at all in the beginning. I also have found the behest system to be great for parties as I always join the other behest players in a party. I have also found the economy to be pretty stable. I just want to say I agree with your points. I disagree with your view (I'm an optimist)

Lets say you started today as a Leatherworker. You start with what? 50k? that will buy you less than 10 sheepskins.
The game was designed so you could main as a crafter or gatherer without ever having to go out and battle. thats what it was advertised as. That is essentially impossible today on pretty well every craft. And thats because of inflation. And the thing is, it will just get worse and worse and worse over time. I guess if the game is focused on dow/dom it might be fine since you can essentially get all the gear you need overtime as leve rewards. But starting as a crafter is no longer really viable. Its not the same as it was when it was released at least (which is how i think it had been intended to be). When the new dev team took over i think they strayed wayyy off path from what the original devs had seen as the direction for the game and economy. and i think that's what has resulted in these imbalances and problems.


But i love your optimism and i hope it all pans out <3

and as for the quest thing:

It doesn't matter if they come. Its about perception from new players. If they come in to a bunch of horrid quests combined with the other problems i mentioned they will not feel like the games worth sticking with. The quests will always be there, and new players may get them and think the entire games like that. Whereas FFXI had almost all cs-based quests. I mean even years into the game i still had to worry about which npc i talked to in san'doria since so many proc'd a 5 min long cutscene for a quest.

I've gotten about 8 friends to try the game. All have quit within two weeks. Most are now playing Rift lol.

[Alzelia]

Lets say you started today as a Leatherworker. You start with what? 50k? that will buy you less than 10 sheepskins.
The game was designed so you could main as a crafter or gatherer without ever having to go out and battle. thats what it was advertised as. That is essentially impossible today on pretty well every craft. And thats because of inflation. And the thing is, it will just get worse and worse and worse over time. I guess if the game is focused on dow/dom it might be fine since you can essentially get all the gear you need overtime as leve rewards. But starting as a crafter is no longer really viable. Its not the same as it was when it was released at least (which is how i think it had been intended to be). When the new dev team took over i think they strayed wayyy off path from what the original devs had seen as the direction for the game and economy. and i think that's what has resulted in these imbalances and problems.


But i love your optimism and i hope it all pans out <3

and as for the quest thing:

It doesn't matter if they come. Its about perception from new players. If they come in to a bunch of horrid quests combined with the other problems i mentioned they will not feel like the games worth sticking with. The quests will always be there, and new players may get them and think the entire games like that. Whereas FFXI had almost all cs-based quests. I mean even years into the game i still had to worry about which npc i talked to in san'doria since so many proc'd a 5 min long cutscene for a quest.

I've gotten about 8 friends to try the game. All have quit within two weeks. Most are now playing Rift lol.

Thanks! I'll try to write up a more in-depth response tomorrow. It's bed time for me now. All I can say is I hope they loose the Idea that you can beat the game without DOW or DOM classes.

[Azurymber]

Thanks! I'll try to write up a more in-depth response tomorrow. It's bed time for me now. All I can say is I hope they loose the Idea that you can beat the game without DOW or DOM classes.

sweet dreams

[Mack]

This topic is about 2 months too early...I'd say way for some stuff to start rolling it, I don't even know where this game is headed. I know we're getting battle overhaul, content injection, UI remake along with better tutorials on how to play the game according to the devs...plus when players starts joining on PS3 release it'll be a lot like (hopefully) PC release and all areas will become populated...difference this time being that they will stay (maybe).

[Joeking]

plus when players starts joining on PS3 release it'll be a lot like (hopefully) PC release and all areas will become populated

Lemme fix this for you.

"Plus when Japanese players starts joining on PS3 release it'll be a lot like PC release and all areas will become populated on Japanese Servers."

[Kilta_Firelotus]

Azure.... I played ffxi for about 6 years. I've done tons of quests, most 30 times each. Very rare did a quest have a CS. I actually took time to explore the cities and talk to the npc. Even in the instances. There is more lore then you guys are letting on. Lore actually has almost nothing to do with the main story. Lore is the stage, setting, and the prequal. This game has alot more lore then you guys thing, just take a closer look for it. Pay attention to the smaller stiff to see the bigger picture.
Some lore people over look.

1 teleporting stresses out our bodies because moving alone the aether waves is a bit dangerous. Which is why we use anima to travel It is a fail safe that protects us.

2 The adventures guild and the various other guilds were set up after the sudden halt of the empire. The reason was to give everyone jobs or people would have something to do while keeping our skill up just incase the empire does continue its attack. The guildleves are cards that represent what job we are doing.