FFXIV better stop doing what WoW's doing, because its losing millions of subs.

[Whocareswhatmynameis]

Counter Point. Wildstar. It was all about driving the casuals away and look how quickly its crashed and burned

So you point to the other extreme. Then FFXIV 2.0 should have crashed and burned too right? It didn't have LFR or easy mode raiding. I already know there is nothing that I will say that will change people minds on this topic, it's like arguing religion with someone that's religious. They don't care about the facts, only their opinion.

But people will eventually have to confront the fact that the more accessible they make WoW the more subs they lose. Garrisons just compounded a problem that was there for years. 5.6M subs should be a clear indicator that accessibility isn't doing ANYTHING to retain subscribers. If accessability is there to retain subscribers then it is doing the opposite of the effect Blizzard wanted to achieve.

[Colorful]

snip

It didn't? What about the Crystal Tower raids, or other content like HM/EX primals? The people after hardcore content are very much in the minority, I think the total amount of players that beat Coil was around 10%, right? Try to build a game around that small niche and you're going to fail. Casuals make up most of the subs, they had very little to do other than garrisons and LFR, and with them removing Tier armour from LFR there was even less reason for them to stay subscribed. Compare it to Wrath with an enormous amount of fun dungeons for the non-raiders to play. A game can appeal to both the hardcore and casual audience, if it only appeals to the hardcore it will fail, and if it only appeals to the casual it'll never be the top MMO. The raids in WoD are incredible, that's not what they're lacking.

[Vandril]

So you point to the other extreme. Then FFXIV 2.0 should have crashed and burned too right? It didn't have LFR or easy mode raiding.

No, it shouldn't have. Because, while it didn't have LFR or easy mode raiding, it did have a metric ton of casual content that non-hardcore raiders had no problems focusing on. Besides that, the hardest of hard raiding content in 2.0 were all made easier every patch due to newer content - some of which were easier than the raids - and the better gear that came with it. Outgearing content will make even hard content easier, and the updates that allowed this to happen came often enough to where more casual players did not grow bored of the more casual content before these previously-difficult raids became available to them. Of course, the Echo buff supplemented this when it was released.

Accessibility does not ruin games, and I can prove it with a concept: a game with infinite unique content would never grow boring and stale, no matter how accessible all of the content is.

Of course, infinite content is impossible, let alone infinite unique content. But this concept outlines the fact that accessibility itself does not cause games to become less interesting, but rather the lack of engaging content does. Realistically, a game that periodically gets updated with new content - such as MMORPGs tend to in order to retain players - must create enough content to keep their players fully engaged until the next release of new content. Accessibility can be defined as the ease with which players can access and complete each piece of content, either individually or as a whole, and has a strong and obvious direct correlation with the speed with which the player base completes and bores with the content.

What we can take away from all of this is that there needs to be a balance between rate of new content and rate of content completion. Since accessibility is so strongly tied to the rate of content completion, you can safely say that a healthy game needs a balance between rate of new content and accessibility. If the rate of new content is too low in comparison to accessibility, which is too high, then the players finish all of the content and grow bored waiting for new content. If accessibility is low when compared to the rate of new content, which is high, then players will either have more content than they can possibly ever complete (which would be a waste of resources on the developer's part, thus lowering profits) or will be unable to access enough content easily enough to the point where the content may not even exist for a majority of the player base, resulting in lost players.

The ideal is a balance between rate of new content and accessibility. If content is accessible enough to where a majority of players can experience it and new content is numerous enough to where players will have little to no downtime between content releases, then the game's player base will remain engaged throughout the life of this balance.

TL;DR - Accessibility does not kill games, no matter how extreme. What kills games in regards to accessibility is a broken "new content:accessibility" balance.

[Whocareswhatmynameis]

..

I do kind of agree with what you are saying, new content will keep people interested despite blowing through the content extremely fast. And I believe that's why FFXIV has done as well at it has, It's released huge content patches every couple months. When I first saw the gold saucer I was actually struck back that they had actually created something that massive in just a reg content patch. I just worry about the sustainability of that system.

I guess I just miss the old days where you would hear people say "You can't beat this game, no matter how much you play there something to do." People said that about ffxi and the Older WoW expansions. You don't hear people say that anymore, because it is very easy to run out of things to do. Neverreap isn't going to hold people's attention for long in ffxiv. They really need endgame that can't be blown through in 4 hours like Alex normal was. EX primals are good but there's only 2 of them right now.

[rabbitzero]

"You can't beat this game, no matter how much you play there something to do." People said that about ffxi and the Older WoW expansions. You don't hear people say that anymore, because it is very easy to run out of things to do.

Those games had slower leveling at the time, and a HUGE grind. It wasn't because there was so much to do, it was that you were at the mercy of drops or farming. Vanilla WoW had just a couple things at end to do, other than farm Molten Core for you piece that may never drop or you may never win. It was also exaggeration that you'd never run out of things to do, because if you didn't raid, you would as soon as you hit cap, unless you made an alt, and just did it all over again.

[jomoru]

So you point to the other extreme. Then FFXIV 2.0 should have crashed and burned too right? It didn't have LFR or easy mode raiding. I already know there is nothing that I will say that will change people minds on this topic, it's like arguing religion with someone that's religious. They don't care about the facts, only their opinion.

considering your facts are just wrong? But then the Hardmode gamers needs his faith in his god because reality is biased against him. ARR launched with a Dungeon finder. It has a whole raid tier that's PURE casual there's no 24 man hard mode. Only LFR level of difficulty easy mode out there. Alex Normal is pretty much LFR mode now equivalently.

[Whocareswhatmynameis]

considering your facts are just wrong?

When i started playing ffxiv 2.0, after I hit 50 I spent roughly 2 months taking down each EX primal one at a time. Then I spent about 4 months going through each turn of coil 1 at a time. that's 6 months of quality content.

In heavensward I spent 4 hours beating alexander normal mode and have no desire to do savage because it's the exact same bosses.... the game doesn't need "moar content" it need content that can't be beaten in a single play session. It needs esoterics that take longer than 4 hours a week to cap. With the increased drop rate of alex normal I find myself not really needing to run each alex floor more than once.

For gearing purposes there is roughly 5 hours of gameplay each week. Which is prob why people are so upset with the amount of "gating"

[StrejdaTom]

In heavensward I spent 4 hours beating alexander normal mode and have no desire to do savage because it's the exact same bosses.... the game doesn't need "moar content" it need content that can't be beaten in a single play session. It needs esoterics that take longer than 4 hours a week to cap. With the increased drop rate of alex normal I find myself not really needing to run each alex floor more than once.

I can already see all the rant, I wish we had more challenging content, problem is that people who don't want challenge use new players as their meatshield saying that they need to make old content almost soloable, so now I am just playing with my friend who is new to the game, already 52 and finished every duty and trial on first try as a tank, kinda sad to look at him as he is finding some challenge where there is none, I don't even think he will make it to 60 before leaving out of boredoom.

I actually don't understand why FFXIV community has the mentality that every dungeon and story trial has to be finished on first try, this is probably the first MMO where I don't wipe in new dungeons when they release them.. and honestly it feels bad. I want to wipe more, not only on savage raids.

[jomoru]

When i started playing ffxiv 2.0, after I hit 50 I spent roughly 2 months taking down each EX primal one at a time. Then I spent about 4 months going through each turn of coil 1 at a time. that's 6 months of quality content.

First off there weren't Xms in 2.0 they were hms. Second that period was when it was litterally impossible to succeed on t5 without luck.