Ff14 A realm unfinished

[Madeleine]

A modern MMO that is released (twice) with less content than what vanilla WoW had on release almost a decade ago is pretty... Fail.

WoW had just as much content, if not less...

Lack of content is not the same as content that is undesireable to you.
WP, AK, CM, Prae, Titan, Garuda, Chimera, Ifrit, Dzemael Darkhold, Aurum Vale, Cape Westwind, Hydra, Coils, crafting, and Grand Company leves can all be consider end game. Because you do not want to do but two of those is not game developer's fault.

[Alavastre]

WoW had just as much content, if not less...

Lack of content is not the same as content that is undesireable to you.
WP, AK, CM, Prae, Titan, Garuda, Chimera, Ifrit, Dzemael Darkhold, Aurum Vale, Cape Westwind, Hydra, Coils, crafting, and Grand Company leves can all be consider end game. Because you do not want to do but two of those is not game developer's fault.

It's not their fault, but it's their problem. Like any service, the company providing that service must keep their customers happy. Though I agree people have unrealistic expectations for modern MMO's, it's still a problem the developers must deal with.

I myself think there should be more content. Who wouldn't? We all want more. But it's good enough for me to stay subbed and wait until 2.1. Then I suppose I will have enough stuff to do until 2.2 ect. I understand where people are coming from, but there is a massive content update right around the corner. And it's been detail highly. By now, you should know if you'll enjoy it or not. Then make your choices accordingly.

To me, when you buy a steak in a restaraunt. 20 mins go by, and then you start bitching that you're hungery. Well, you just ordered your food, and it takes a while to make it. Whats the point of crying about the lack of content when massive amount of content is on it's way?

[Teraluna]

WoW had just as much content, if not less...

Now if the poster had compared it to Rift at launch. Which begs the question: If Rift had to go ftp with all the content, classes, build variations, and expansions in that game, I wonder what is going to prevent ARR going the same way?
Don't get me wrong here, the last thing the genre needs is yet another subscription mmo going ftp, there have been too many of these, Rift, SW, SWTOR, Aion, Tera. This game needs to buck the trend - to encourage other games developers at least.
Relying purely on a franchise name won't cut it, the original launch of this game proved that - so SE the pressure is on to keep enough subscription numbers - how you do it when a solid game like Rift couldn't, and against other new games coming out - not sure, but hopefully you will :-)

[Alavastre]

Now if the poster had compared it to Rift at launch. Which begs the question: If Rift had to go ftp with all the content, classes, build variations, and expansions in that game, I wonder what is going to prevent ARR going the same way?

Rift was awesome when it came out. But each game has different problems. Rift was fun, but leveling was a terrible experience. Endgame was pretty hard though. SWTOR just dropped the ball. To this day they haven't expanded on their guild system.

But, to answer your question, it was money that forced those games to F2P. And not that they were losing it, it's where they got financed from. Yoshi talked about this a lot, you should check out his older interviews. Basically SE bankrolls it's own games where as other companies get investors. So when things go badly, SE can take the hit and not have to worry about getting money to their skitish investors. Afterall, they want them to invest again.

Hopefully that answers your question about why FFXIV won't be going F2P. At least, not for a long while.

[Tupsi]

When is a MMO finished?

Usually 3 months - 1 year after launch when it gets shutdown if you're talking about these days Otherwise I get what the OP Means, at times it does kind of feel like a "beta", but that's mostly just the "standard" design that makes it feel a bit bland in some areas.

WoW had just as much content, if not less...

Lack of content is not the same as content that is undesireable to you.
WP, AK, CM, Prae, Titan, Garuda, Chimera, Ifrit, Dzemael Darkhold, Aurum Vale, Cape Westwind, Hydra, Coils, crafting, and Grand Company leves can all be consider end game. Because you do not want to do but two of those is not game developer's fault.

WP - Tomestone grind considering people who use it for its intended purpose gets yelled at or told they're "undergeared" even though WP drops the gear you're supposed to use to go into AK with.
AK - Tomestone grind, same deal.
CM - Storyline Dungeon.
Praetorium - Storyline Dungeon.
Primals - This can be considered End-game.
Chimera - For Relic? Quest mob.
Darkhold - Promotion quest.
AV - Side content you can generally skip if it you transitioned over from 1.0 and not doing relic.
Cape Westwind - Write in full detail why would I do this of my freewill after beating it if not to help people?
Hydra - Relic quest, skippable otherwise.
Coils - The actual only true end-game currently.
Crafting - Not content
GC - Not content
Guildleves - You can in a semantics kind of way consider it content but there's no substance to it - it's a mean to an end.

So in all reality, this game does have a lack of content and even Yoshi touches on that players feel it does, which is why he's basically touting 2.1 as a "key update to fix it."

[Teraluna]

Alavastre - thank you for a well thought out reply. I hope the way you say the game is funded does have a positive impact in regard to retaining it's subscription format.
My thoughts are about unique "hooks" that are going to keep players here. Having a solid, well supported game may be enough, although it hasn't been for other games. I guess it may just be down to the formula of frequent content updates and catering to as broad a player base as possible.

[Alavastre]

My thoughts are about unique "hooks" that are going to keep players here. Having a solid, well supported game may be enough, although it hasn't been for other games. I guess it may just be down to the formula of frequent content updates and catering to as broad a player base as possible.

I hear you. I really think they'll focus on PVE stuff, but I love that PVP will be apart of it. I love to play me some PVP. Honestly for me, I love secrets. Like finding hidden places, or a hidden boss. Puzzles and very rare stuff always interest me. I really hope they start putting stuff like that in the game. So far, everything has been straight forward. It may take a year, but this game will find it's direction. That and hints of an expansion are always positive things that players want. They want to know their developer hasn't given up on the game. And that really plagues F2P games.

Here's to hoping.

[Horg]

yeah, why can't MMO companies just get together enough capital to create a fully finished game within an extremely small time period with all planned content for the next 10 years and release it at a pace customized to every single player out there...oh wait...that's a single player game...

[Ri_ri]

WoW had just as much content, if not less...

Lack of content is not the same as content that is undesireable to you.
WP, AK, CM, Prae, Titan, Garuda, Chimera, Ifrit, Dzemael Darkhold, Aurum Vale, Cape Westwind, Hydra, Coils, crafting, and Grand Company leves can all be consider end game. Because you do not want to do but two of those is not game developer's fault.

Good post.

The game has a lot of content, the problem is that most people disregard its existence unless you can gain some silly numbers out of it. It doesn't matter how much reward you add (as if we're doing work and need to get paid to play the game), people will still do the most "numerically efficient" and disregard everything else.

When people would rather quit a run that had not even started and go AFK in Revenant's Toll than play the game, you know you wouldn't please them no matter what you do.

[Tupsi]

Good post.

The game has a lot of content, the problem is that most people disregard its existence unless you can gain some silly numbers out of it. It doesn't matter how much reward you add (as if we're doing work and need to get paid to play the game), people will still do the most "numerically efficient" and disregard everything else.

What do I gain by doing Cape Westwind after I beat the story? You can completely skip Cutter's Cry for example unless that's one of the new promotion quests. It's not that people disregard its existence, it's the fact some things said to be content is by large one time content only or stuff you repeat for leveling (guildleves) or side stuff you'll never honestly need or want to do.

"The numerically efficient" content are content that you actually would do multiple times. Even Guildhests have no purpose after you do it initially since you lose the completion bonus exp and repeating it is slower than just doing 1 "talk to NPC1 then NPC2 and profit" quest.

As of now I've never honestly seen anyone want to put together a party to do Cape Westwind for the heck of it.