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

[Kilta_Firelotus]

And you guys can simply not play a game you obviously dislike or the company. (being nice) I'm waiting on the battle fixes to start playing again because I just started playing and I do not want to relearn a new system after getting used to the old one.

All the points brought up have had community rep replies to them. Such as the linkshell stuff. There is no magic button for mmo fixes. They are reading what we want/ need and proritizing it. The battle fixes (which we know will be a 2 mnth process starting in mid june.) will happen first. And they hope have all the list which alot was put in since said list was out by late augest/early september. And a new list written. But also things happen.

Over speculation is what brings in the dissapointment. And the expectation of how things were in ffxi are how they will be in ffxiv. Which isn't the case. Somethings people just need to suck up on and stop crying over. Take the game for what it is and decide, play it or go do something else. (again being nice)

[Nuru]

The thing is, most people don't care to know the truth because it will hurt their arguments and side of the debate -- this is why people tend to ignore things while they go out on their own tangent.

Its either they are working hard, or sitting on their asses.

Most of them would think that they are sitting on their asses is because they are sittin on their own asses waiting for something to happen. Now if people would actually find something productive to do or just occupy themselves, time will fly by and the next patch would release before they realized.

[Kilta_Firelotus]

Also note that making abd maintaining mmo is an on going process to make the game fun for everyone while at the same time add more content. Take WoW for example, with the launch of cataclysm that made most races found in game playable, that also remade most of the maps. They added and remade Stormwind taking out all "fake" buildings and only keeping the ones players could enter, they rebuilt Stormwind keep.

Similar with ffxi, they took out the level caps on stuff to make them more replayable for newbies. They remade how wait works in ffxi so players can have full use of the macro system. Even when as far as combined all the AHs (or soon) .

Currently they are fixing the game after they fixed it, that when they will start maintinging it. Which means a better LS system etc.

[Blair]

This is a good thread, i wish more people read about it. Especaily members from dev team.

This is very constructive becuz it tells many important points dev members have missed/skipped.

Also it prove that we're not just dumb/young/naive player who know nothing.

If dev can't convince old player to stay, how do they expect to maintain new player?

I believe giving dev more pressure will result a better result. Not just let them do whatever they want.

1.18 is a Very Very important turning point. It will determine IF previous players will be back to support the game or not.

Watch out! Yoshi. You only get 1 shot in this summer. 2 the most( July update?)... well, GLuck!

[Kailea_Nagisa]

Its either they are working hard, or sitting on their asses.

Most of them would think that they are sitting on their asses is because they are sittin on their own asses waiting for something to happen. Now if people would actually find something productive to do or just occupy themselves, time will fly by and the next patch would release before they realized.

This is always how I felt.... lets see what am I doing to pass the time.....

Building an arcade cabnet
playing other games (right now Yakuza 4)
doing a few leves here and there at complete random
studying for my CCNA (god my brain hurts)
working......

am I bored? no, do I complain about SE? no, why? because I am smart enough to let SE do their thing, as I do mine.

[Shai]

Yeah, they need to do a postmortem on this game just like how they did one for FF13:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/3...ntasy_XIII.php



And like how the did one for FF12:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/new...hp?story=13052


I would be really really curious to see one done about FF14's development.

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

Before getting to the main content of the talk, Murata announced that Final Fantasy XII has sold more than 5 million units worldwide, and that it has garnered many awards from various publications.

With that in mind he wished to discuss what he felt helped the game achieve this success. The first thing “the team” tried to consider was what they consider the core ingredients of Final Fantasy. The narrowed down the key ideas to innovation, quality and volume.

I don't know about you (all) but this little blurb explains to me why I feel the Final Fantasy series isn't being marketed to me any more. Aside from "quality" I don't see innovation or volume as the leading strengths of (previous) Final Fantasy games.

I haven' tread the XIII one, but I'm sure it's about how successful it was, too. SE only reads $$$ signs.

They don't really care if I like the game anymore. They certainly don't make the game feel as loved as they used to as if they were worked on by a team that cared more about making a good game than it did about how badass they are they work at SE and how much money this game will make! That's how SE makes me feel as a consumer.

They probably should have tried to flip that around before XIV, but XIV is just another example.

[Shai]

I read 13 and it does a better job of discussing the strengths and weakness.

[Janglo]

Real talk: it would be a huge mistake to try to get more people on board with development going by so slowly. This is something that basically needs to be kept low profile until they can start pumping out good updates at a decent speed. This is almost as bad as Aion NA's updates.

I think that if we as players want this game to succeed faster we are going to have to "donate" by allowing them to start subscription fees with the promise that it makes a big difference in development. If it would help get this game on its feet I would pay. Not saying its worth paying for at the moment, but this might give us a brighter future.

[Azurymber]

Many of you have pulled this way off track or didn't bother reading anything more than the title.
This is NOT about the dev team not pulling through or sitting on their asses.
It is NOT about the game sucking.

It is about SEs inability to keep people happy.
I think Jynx has made the only legit argument against this so far which can basically be summed up at SE should just work on fixing the game instead of making the current population happy.

It doesn't matter how hard things are for the dev team. That doesn't mean they can't communicate better, or manage patches better, or fix small things that get on everyones nerves before wasting time on things like guild tasks.

Right now, this dev team has not shown much. They fixed the wards a bit, added in sidequests, nms that most ppl find to be a joke, and guild tasks which seem pointless.
June will be a turning point. if they release another disliked patch there's a good chance a lot of people will just leave the game.

But the point is, this thread is about their inability to appease players and improve the games reputation. Instead, their actions have been significantly hurting the games reputation. Especially when a patch gets hyped up and then has nothing.

When an official forum has more "this fails" threads than anything else you have an obvious problem.
Since day 1 SE has ignored a lot of this.
If I was incorrect then surplus would be gone by now. But its still here. And it hasn't stopped RMT or botters. So all it does is annoy people. And thats just one of 100+ things SE has done wrong marketing/PR wise.

Also i think its unfair to call this an early beta test because we all -PAID- for a game, not for a beta. If you accept this is a beta test you are saying its legit for companies to lie to you and sell you an incomplete product that they claim is complete so that you can test it for them....
Imagine buying experimental toothpaste passed off as real toothpaste and finding out 6 months later when you have 3 cavities. Would you ever suggest the company to friends or buy from them again? If the people arguing that this is just a beta are correct, then this is essentially what SE is doing now.

[Shai]

Many of you have pulled this way off track or didn't bother reading anything more than the title.
This is NOT about the dev team not pulling through or sitting on their asses.
It is NOT about the game sucking.

It is about SEs inability to keep people happy.
I think Jynx has made the only legit argument against this so far which can basically be summed up at SE should just work on fixing the game instead of making the current population happy.

It doesn't matter how hard things are for the dev team. That doesn't mean they can't communicate better, or manage patches better, or fix small things that get on everyones nerves before wasting time on things like guild tasks.

Right now, this dev team has not shown much. They fixed the wards a bit, added in sidequests, nms that most ppl find to be a joke, and guild tasks which seem pointless.
June will be a turning point. if they release another disliked patch there's a good chance a lot of people will just leave the game.

But the point is, this thread is about their inability to appease players and improve the games reputation. Instead, their actions have been significantly hurting the games reputation. Especially when a patch gets hyped up and then has nothing.

When an official forum has more "this fails" threads than anything else you have an obvious problem.
Since day 1 SE has ignored a lot of this.
If I was incorrect then surplus would be gone by now. But its still here. And it hasn't stopped RMT or botters. So all it does is annoy people. And thats just one of 100+ things SE has done wrong marketing/PR wise.

Also i think its unfair to call this an early beta test because we all -PAID- for a game, not for a beta. If you accept this is a beta test you are saying its legit for companies to lie to you and sell you an incomplete product that they claim is complete so that you can test it for them....
Imagine buying experimental toothpaste passed off as real toothpaste and finding out 6 months later when you have 3 cavities. Would you ever suggest the company to friends or buy from them again? If the people arguing that this is just a beta are correct, then this is essentially what SE is doing now.

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.