A friendly warning to SE: Do NOT turn FFXIV into an Asia Grinder!

[Gormogon]

Took me about a week to realize FF14arr was a paint by the numbers, shift into maximum overgrind, MMO. Not really sure what people are afraid it will turn into to be honest.
Practically all sub MMO's rely on absurd grind/time gates to keep you playing.

Thing is that it's tolerable as long as the grind is fun and not locked behind various ways to screw you over.

Sure MMO's rely on grinding and time gates yet it's a gamble that only few do right and don't meddle with their formula. You can see people playing games like Farmville and Minecraft and see that despite being a massive grindfest and I'm guessing it has its own ridiculous time gates but people enjoy it because it's overall fun for them to do. If those 2 games per se approached that grinding and time gates with ridiculous punishments and RNGs they wouldn't have ended as successful as they did with the community they have.

Relic weapon and Zenith started off good. Yet for some reason people complained that everyone has them and Yoshida agreed to that statement. Next thing you know we ended up with unpleasant change in direction with Atma and now Novus. Animus however ended as an acceptable compromise that's basically borderline crossing into unpleasant simply because it was more tolerable than the Atma grind. Without Atma I don't know what kind of reception it would've gotten because the topic of Animus consists on not enjoying the brayflox myth farms.

[Yukiko]

On Ragnarok, I buy beastmen dyes for around 350 gil and sell them for 1000 gil.

Great, now you can forget it, because everyone is doing it... *sigh*
Have to look for other things to sell now...
Please dont tell secrets

PS: You can trade in myth items to sell for gil with nice prices too!

[Tupsi]

Oh right, that makes turning the game into an utter grindfest okay.

WoW was (and still is) grindy and I'm pretty sure Blizzard isn't Asian. There's no such thing as "Asian grinder", there's grinding and no grind - there just seem to be bitter feeling from ARR going from handing out everything to one putting in an iota work.

We get denied FFVII HD and Final Fantasy Type-0 being localized.
Yet they are happy to announce that FFXIII HD collection.

Funnily enough, XIII sold very, very well, not the same as VII but to the point it does make sense that they'd do an HD collection (like every other company is doing.) They already said remaking VII won't happen until another FF surpasses it and we know how much people love to say FFXI is "horrible and no one liked it" even though it already surpassed VII many years ago.

[AngelMoon]

Been playing since ver.1. Got PLD animus and blah blah.. but i woke up one morning asking myself.. why am i really playing this game.. It was fun, but now all the fun is gone. Time to unsub, and play my backlog. I'm done...

[Gormogon]

Funnily enough, XIII sold very, very well, not the same as VII but to the point it does make sense that they'd do an HD collection (like every other company is doing.)

Yet XIII-2 and LR did not and the overall reception for XIII wasn't that good. Yet if their expectations do revolve around that info then I guess it will be a success if not Square-Enix will be in for a surprise.

[Felis]

We get denied FFVII HD and Final Fantasy Type-0 being localized.
Yet they are happy to announce that FFXIII HD collection.

Link?
Isn't FF XIII not already in HD (1080p) on PS3?
The next HD remake I know is Final fantasy XII, because Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD sold good.

[Vahlnir]

Yet XIII-2 and LR did not and the overall reception for XIII wasn't that good. Yet if their expectations do revolve around that info then I guess it will be a success if not Square-Enix will be in for a surprise.

As hard as it was for myself to believe, XIII did well enough to warrant a sequel. The sequel did well enough for them to produce another installment as well. I'm not really a XIII fan by any means, but if they can make money by milking it for all it's worth then they will. FF VII was a huge hit and sparked a few spinoffs and appearances in other games, which were actually pretty decent: Dirge of Cerberus, Crisis Core, Advent Children, Kingdom Hearts, Dissidia, etc. Dissidia is a FF game entirely but still, characters from VII made an appearance there. My point is that SE is a business, if they can make money off of something then they will do whatever they can do keep doing so.

[Gormogon]

link?

It's all part of the E3 rumors going around so don't take them to personal and get hyped. Above all I'm simply saying that my point of view they would hesitate to do it and if they did I wouldn't be surprised.



Also now that I found the image it's not FFXIII collection but The Lightning Collection which makes more sense.

snip

I don't care that it warrants a sequel or not. Yet all that focus on FFXIII and being denied Type-0's localization and other Final Fantasy installments for more Lightning does in fact rub me the wrong way.

We've seen Lightning mainly in everything last gen and she even made an appearance in other titles such as Dissidia and FFXIV as well as the rumor that she may also partake in Playstation Allstars round 2.

[kiotsukete]

I completely agree with the OP's sentiments. Although, I think that using the word "Asia" in the title connotes vaguely racist undertones (as has been already said, Western MMO's also have grindfests) and was unnecessary to make the point.

So.. you beat all the raids and dungeons within a month?No? Oh..

Except for new top-tier raids that require a static, it is absolutely possible to beat all other new mid/low-tier content (dungeons, trials, CT, etc) within a month. I say this as a 10-12 hrs/week player. But because my playtime is irregular I can't commit to a regularly scheduled static, so top-tier content will forever be out of my reach. I didn't down T5 until a month after 2.2 hit, in a PF party, after Coil 1 had been nerfed from being top-tier to mid-tier.

So I've come to realize that I'm okay with just playing around and having fun with mid/low-tier content, because SE now has a proven track record that eventually...everything becomes mid/low-tier content and gear. Which is actually really great because it means that I can sub for only 1 month out of 3, and spend the other 2 months playing other great games rather than grinding away in FFXIV waiting for the next big thing.

Ridiculous RNG-based grinds like the Atma>Novus quests just aren't fun enough to keep me subbed for the other 2 months. Merely capping tomes each week grinding the same content over and over for gear that I know will be made much easier to get in the next patch isn't compelling enough either. So I, for one, am going to do exactly what the OP stated: let my current 6 month sub run out next week > resub when 2.3 drops > play new mid/low-tier content for a month > unsub for 2 months > come back for 2.4 when 2.3's top-tier content becomes the new mid-tier > rinse, repeat

SE only facilitates such consumer behavior by 1) the monthly "all you can eat" subscription model, 2) their game design philosophy of "planned obsolescence," and 3) by tuning the ilevel requirements for mid/low-tier content so low. The latest HM dungeons only require i55, Levi EX i80, and T5 i82. Which tells me that the i90+ gear I have now for my PLD, WHM, and BRD (covering all three roles) will be enough for any new mid/low-tier content in 2.3.

Also, you expect them to be able to, in 3 months, make enough non-repeatable/non-hard content that will last you anymore than a month to go through for the first time? You have very very VERY unreasonable expectations.

That may be, but that doesn't mean I have to keep sending SE money after I'm done with the actual 1 month of new, non top-tier content that's included in each patch. I am a FF fanboy, but not that much of a fanboy >.>; The money and time I save by not subbing for 2 months, I can put towards the many other great games out there.

TL;DR - I enjoy playing FFXIV, but I agree that there's not enough new, non-grindfest content in each patch (that doesn't require a static) to justify subbing for more than 1 month between patches. Especially when we all now know that SE intends all gear to become obsolete and all content to be nerfed over time.

[Gesser]

Made a similar thread proposing changes they could make to ease the grind, make the game far more enjoyable again:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...res-are-Absurd