FFXIV has lost it's magic

[Aegis]

Today's market has changed. All people want is THAT kind of game. It doesn't matter if they only play 2-3 months and then leave. It is still what the market is dictating, unfortunately. Trying to change it by whining in a forum is pointless, though it did work well for wowtards in GW2 with their gear grind crusade

See, this argument I can understand (though calling the OP 'whining' is off the mark and insulting). And in a F2P game, sure, it doesn't matter if people aren't actively logging in as long as they buy their tat from the cash shop, make the investors back their money and the game can limp on with minimal updates of significance (hey! more shiny stuff on the cash shop!) until the crowd wanders on.

Subbed MMOs need people to be actively engaged with the game to justify maintaining their subs. OP's point is that the game is missing out on a compelling feature by being restricted to a case of log in, select dungeon, wait, raid, repeat, log out which is ultimately not very engaging.

Whether you feel he is accurate in his assessment or not is something valid to argue. "Hurr, this isn't XI-2 you guys don't matter' is just derp.

[Evangela]

FFXI had a larger marketshare than XIV does. XI also had excellent player retention.

yourargumentisinvalid.jpg

LOL player retention, even you're now quit XI and subbing to XIV, along with the other ex-XI players here.

[Raminax]

I must be crazy, because every new game is magical for me. Enjoying a new world, exploring its nooks and crannies, figuring out cool skill combinations, enjoying the characters and so on. Apparently I'm dumb and easily impressed, or maybe I just happen to appreciate every single game I get for what it is. Though I will admit Eorzea's world isn't particularly big after realizing how quickly you can get around on a Chocobo, even more so when you can just use Aetherytes (which I rarely use anyway, I'm a miser).

And I still don't get why people are so enamored with "just" timesinks. Sure, I endured them when you needed like 40 Living Essences and 12 Larval Acids to craft your Hide of the Wild as the must-have Healer cloak, but I sighed in relief when that was all done. The enemies sucked, died effortlessly and I was more or less staring at my hands and thinking how much of a robot I was. Now, grinding money off of the Scarlet Crusade Elites in Tyr's Hand on my own? That was fun and interesting. The mobs proved to be an adequate challenge. I had to kite the melee ones because they hit my Mage too hard. I had to regularly Counterspell the casters to be able to survive, or interrupting their heals so that the battle wouldn't go on forever. Indeed, I'd die pretty often until I got it down, but suddenly farming Gold to be able to buy consumables and such didn't feel like that much of a chore. Mmyes, those Righteous Orbs. Come to momma!

Sure, timesink it away. I will happily take it up the arse if you deem it necessary, just as I used to (and still arguably do, hi grinding my own materials where possible). But gods, make it interesting. I'd take requiring a day to reach the level cap any day if I had to kill an enemy equivalent to soloing Twintania every time. Requiring a year to hit the level cap when all you can fight are Wererabbits and Werebunnies auto-attacking you can go burn in a fire.

Actually, screw you all. I'm off to reminisce. <_<

P.S: 1000 character limits suck. Plx fix, Squeenix/Rito james/volvo pls etc.

[Reslin]

Just think about what you are saying. 2-300k subscribers, paying their $12.99 (or whatever it is) every month. For 12 years.

You think XIV will be around in another 9 years? Or SWTOR? Or Rift?

That player retention is incredible. There are so few other games that can match or exceed it. WoW and EvE can. It made FFXI the most profitable game in SE's history, bar none.

Considering that SWG managed to last 8 years after crippling itself, alienating it's own fanbase, and continued to make mistake after mistake? Yes I do believe FF14 can last 9+ years and I do believe SWTOR will be around for awhile as well (considering it's been gaining players recently rather than losing them ever since it's gone F2P not that I play it anymore.) FF14 is the first mmo in a long time to raise in population a few months after launch rather than decrease. Also "Barely beat an 11 year old game." Not a valid argument, why? Most mmos these days have trouble getting 500k subs. Most fall around 130,000 and only go down from there so 600k subs is doing really well in the current market. It's too early to claim that FF14 isn't going to last 10 years this early in it's life. Especially considering that there's still parts in the world that FF14 hasn't launched in yet that can boost it's player base even further.

WoW is an anomaly and not the norm. Just as in the past is the same now. The best mmo's aside from WoW get around 500k subs. Most mmo's fall somewhere between 90,000-250,000. You try to do an old school mmo in the modern market and you end up going the route of Vanguard. 30,000 players within a few months.

[Aegis]

LOL player retention, even you're now quit XI and subbing to XIV, along with the other ex-XI players here.

Correct.

I'm not sure what you're getting at though. Is your argument that I am a hypocrite by subbing to XIV, quitting XI but advocating XI-style mecahanics? It seems a pretty shallow argument, but let me clarify.

The mechanics of the XI world I and (i may be assuming a bit here, in which case they can correct me) others are pushing for are mechanics that have been discarded in XI also. This triggered quite an exodus of players from XI and started the downward spiral it is now on. If they were still present in XI you would see far fewer XI vets posting on here and this game would have fewer subscribers.

You also make the assumption that people posting here are not actively playing XI also. For me this is true, but for many it is not.

The reason I am personally not still playing XI is that my wife played on 360, but it got red ring of death and I had to replace it. When the time came to reinstall XI the Abyssea expansion disc wouldn't work. SE had stopped selling them and the entire game was focused around Abyssea at that point. So my wife quit XI so we could play together on XIV. I might have quit anyway as Abyssea was starting to turn me off the game.

tl;dr Go back to FFXI if you like it so much would be more of an option if the version of XI we liked was still available. If it were, we would and this would not be a good thing for this game.

Considering that SWG managed to last 8 years after crippling itself, alienating it's own fanbase, and continued to make mistake after mistake? Yes I do believe FF14 can last 9+ years and I do believe SWTOR will be around for awhile as well (considering it's been gaining players recently rather than losing them ever since it's gone F2P not that I play it anymore.)

You understand that when they dropped the subscription model, anyone who created a character since but hasn't played it since then counts as an active account by their reckoning? Hell, I account for two of those acounts and I haven't even looked at the game since December.

As for SWG I joined just before the CU and watched the population drop and the ghost towns appear on every planet. I also watched the NGE decimate it even further, I left two weeks after that update. They survived by slashing the dev team down to a bare bones crew and doing no significant updates, just milked the few remaining people for subs while keeping server costs down. This is not a great example of player retention.

FF14 is the first mmo in a long time to raise in population a few months after launch rather than decrease. Also "Barely beat an 11 year old game." Not a valid argument, why? Most mmos these days have trouble getting 500k subs. Most fall around 130,000 and only go down from there so 600k subs is doing really well in the current market. It's too early to claim that FF14 isn't going to last 10 years this early in it's life. Especially considering that there's still parts in the world that FF14 hasn't launched in yet that can boost it's player base even further.

600k in 2013 is still a much smaller share of the market than XI had in 2003.

[Reslin]

Correct.
The mechanics of the XI world I and (i may be assuming a bit here, in which case they can correct me) others are pushing for are mechanics that have been discarded in XI also. This triggered quite an exodus of players from XI and started the downward spiral it is now on. If they were still present in XI you would see far fewer XI vets posting on here and this game would have fewer subscribers.

Problem is you don't have the data to back this up. Your claim is people started leaving FF11 because they changed it's core game philosophy. What made the Devs change it's core game design? They have access to data that you do not. It's more likely the game was losing players which resulted in a shift on how the game was designed. Many of us have played older mmo's and have quit them in the new age that was introduced to us by WoW.

Of course it's a much smaller share considering how massive WoW is and let me tell you. You clone FF11 with better graphics and possibly updated gameplay and you won't come close to WoW's market share even with it's declining playerbase. I'd bet money you wouldn't come close to the 600k mark either. You misunderstand the point; WoW proved to the world that there is a bigger interest in mmos than people realized. That casuals make up more of the gaming market than the die hard players. Their game catered to the casuals. Leveling become more streamlined, reaching end game became easier, and even after they established their player base they made constant steps to make said game more accessible for it's player base. The end result? The biggest mmo in existence. Many people began to quit their older school mmorpgs to hop on board as well many existing mmo's took massive hits to their player base. So what did they do? They began to incorporate WoW's elements to make their game more like WoW. They aimed to appease their casual fanbase in order to retain subscriptions.

Some mmo's tried to do their own thing while ignoring WoW but came up with a problem. People would drop out of their game and they couldn't get new blood to join. The problem is you act like it was a spontaneous idiotic decision by the devs to change FF11 into what it is now when the decision was probably based off data and research.

*Edit* You also missed my point about SWG. It wasn't about player retention. You asked "Do you think FF14 will be around 9 years later?" My answer was "SWG was practically tearing itself to pieces and limped along for 8 years. FF14 is making an attempt to add in people's suggestions, improve the game, and add in more content while staying true to the original vision. Yes I do believe it will last more than 9 years if it keeps going the rate it's going. An MMO has to practically be trying to destroy itself to lose that much of their core fanbase."

Also i don't think FFXI had commercials and years of hype like FFXIV. But let the defenders have their fun. In the end we'll see which one was better by how many subs FFXIV can maintain consistently compared to FFXI.

Even if FF14 doesn't maintain the same sub numbers as 11 did in the past it wouldn't prove "11 is better and it's style would have been better than 14." The market is different. The competition is different.

[Gravehill]

It means the poster does not want to engage with the topic in any meaningful way and would rather dismiss another's views as being biased without paying them the modicum of respect required to actually consider if they have a point.

See also: nostalgia, first love syndrome.

Just because someone dismisses someone else's views as bias, doesn't mean they aren't.

[Mezolitik]

I also miss the halcyon days of a month ago.

I think you mean MMOs have lost their magic.

FFXIV is not an open wilderness because 1.0 was a disaster. The regions were copy-pasta nightmares. Gridania was a honeycomb of meaningless passages. La Noscea was an ocean of green stuff with nothing in it. And Ul'dah was a desert - literally.

We're permanently bound to settlements in FFXIV, via retainers, repair NPCs, Aetherites, merchants, etc. You wouldn't be able to spend more than about half an hour yomping through the countryside before you had to turn around and come all the way back again.

[Fleoming]

all i can personally say is it is wearing off and i actually hate this kinda feeling, what i lost...

[Enkidoh]

Ah, the folly of nostalgia, never mind the fact that both FFXI pre 2010 and FFXIV 1.0 had so many bad points that the vast majority of FF players avoided them (I have a magazine that had a guide to the FF series and stated that it was believed that less than 15% of FF fans actually played XI.) That's not to say I hate XI and 1.0 - I love both, but my love of both games hasn't blinded me to everything they did so horribly wrong, and which I'm glad ARR has let go of (like XI-style exp parties).

And herein lies the real issue here. Certain players are complaining about ARR not because it is broken or there are issues with the game or that they like certain things in FFXI or 1.0. It's simply because ARR is popular - and thus adopt a hipster attitude that they can't enjoy something that everyone else is. It's almost masochistic in a way - enjoying game mechanics that most players now cannot stand.