The Current Status of FFXIV Patch 3.1 and How to Address it Moving Forward

[Kaurie]

Unfortunately, I think you'll find that in the long run it's far from a majority of players that want something more like FFXI's structure. There's not, to my knowledge, any horizontal progression game that has a subscriber base as large as this one's (with perhaps roughly 700k actively playing subscribers and more that are subscribed) and definitely none with a population anywhere approaching WoW's. From what I recall, FFXI peaked at somewhere between 500k and 750k subscribers, but how many of those were actually active is anyone's guess. FFXIV is a much younger game with more subscriptions than that, at least judging by what data's available to us, as is WoW, and part of what makes that possible is that the "vertical treadmill" is better at encouraging players to continue subscribing.

There are few sub games out there, but Guild Wars 2 would be a game that reaches numbers comparable (or exceeding) FFXIV and focuses on Horizontal Progression.

Guild Wars 2 is consistently the top most popular game (on hit count and votes) on mmorpg.com. I know this doesn't really speak to the whole community, but that is something.

Both FFXIV and GW2 suffer from only releasing the total accounts created type of numbers (rather than active players). GW has reached over 7 million prior to it's expansion, where FFXIV was nearer 5. Both are estimated to be between 400-800k active players i think.

Another thing that points to GW2 having a higher active playerbase is the reddit subscribers (128k for GW2 vs 85k for FFXIV).

[Alahra]

GW2 Stuff

True, I probably should have been a little more specific. Guild Wars 2 is a bit of a special case in that it's a lot closer to a game like Diablo III than it is a more traditional subscription MMO, in addition to being entirely free to play. If Guild Wars 2 had a subscription fee on top of a focus on horizontal progression, I don't know that it would be as popular as it is.

As I mentioned, I do think there's room for some more horizontal aspects in XIV, and I'd honestly like to see them here, but I can't imagine we'll ever see a full-scale shift to it, as the subscription aspect seems pretty central to SE's business model for the game. They're also, I have to assume, very wary of full-scale shifts. They tried a couple times to move FFXI to a more vertical model (in the Abyssea era, and more recently with Seekers of Adoulin), and the player backlash, and indeed, subscription bleed, was hugely significant. The people playing the game liked the way it was, and although FFXI had stopped growing, the developers probably learned that a game has a certain natural level beyond which it probably won't expand, despite any massive changes to the overall structure.

That makes me doubt that they'll do anything major to change FFXIV's underlying structure, which have proven to be far more successful than FFXIV was at launch (and also more successful than FFXI ever was).

[Kaurie]

True, I probably should have been a little more specific. Guild Wars 2 is a bit of a special case in that it's a lot closer to a game like Diablo III than it is a more traditional subscription MMO, in addition to being entirely free to play. If Guild Wars 2 had a subscription fee on top of a focus on horizontal progression, I don't know that it would be as popular as it is.

As I mentioned, I do think there's room for some more horizontal aspects in XIV, and I'd honestly like to see them here, but I can't imagine we'll ever see a full-scale shift to it, as the subscription aspect seems pretty central to SE's business model for the game. They're also, I have to assume, very wary of full-scale shifts. They tried a couple times to move FFXI to a more vertical model (in the Abyssea era, and more recently with Seekers of Adoulin), and the player backlash, and indeed, subscription bleed, was hugely significant. The people playing the game liked the way it was, and although FFXI had stopped growing, the developers probably learned that a game has a certain natural level beyond which it probably won't expand, despite any massive changes to the overall structure.

That makes me doubt that they'll do anything major to change FFXIV's underlying structure, which have proven to be far more successful than FFXIV was at launch (and also more successful than FFXI ever was).

True, GW2 not having a sub fee increases it's appeal to people I am sure. Though, it's definitely successful and shouldn't be ignored is all

Personally, I played about 1k hours in GW2 and am at 2.5k hours in FFXIV. I think FFXIV, overall, is way better. GW2 ignoring vertical progression was a big reason I didn't like it, and I think they failed horribly on their implementation of balancing horizontal progression.

I wouldn't want FFXIV to fully move to horizontal, I just want some horizontal progression. In 3.x they made secondary stats even more useless than before, heck even primary stats are becomming less useful. I upgraded my Eso 200 weapon to Relic 210, which has 3 weapon damage and 8 INT. The secondary stats are slightly worse, but 3 WD should overshadow them pretty substantially. My DPS went from 1333 to 1343 on a dummy parse. It's a good thing I slaved for hours to get that increase. /s

[Velhart]

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Thing is, we do have sort of horizontal content in the game, mostly given by odd number patches. More content opens up and different ways to get more gear. Requests I hear are just a full scale change to horizontal which is not realistic in both a sense of the game and business. If the game was built from the ground up with horizontal in mind, I would be more for it. It wasn't however, and if some reason ever they completely dropped their current system and put that in, at best you have a divided audience and more loss in subs is a guarantee.

The question you must always ask yourself is, "How can a certain feature I like from another MMO work in the context of this game?". That is giving constructive criticism and ideas that increases the quality of the game.

[Alahra]

True, GW2 not having a sub fee increases it's appeal to people I am sure. Though, it's definitely successful and shouldn't be ignored is all

Certainly, it shouldn't be. It's just harder to use it as a metric for how popular horizontal progression would be for a game like FFXIV when it's not really the same sort of game. They have some things in common, but the nature of a subscription game is just going to end up very different. It's not as big of a deal if a free to play game releases content that isn't popular, but just look at the frustration we've got over content like LoV and Diadem here. Players that are paying money every month want meaningful content and that puts a lot of pressure on the developers to "keep it vertical," so to speak, because players will usually see "bigger numbers" as valuable in a way that they won't necessarily see more nebulous additions (like the ones in FFXI, for instance).

Personally, I played about 1k hours in GW2 and am at 2.5k hours in FFXIV. I think FFXIV, overall, is way better. GW2 ignoring vertical progression was a big reason I didn't like it, and I think they failed horribly on their implementation of balancing horizontal progression.

I made it about 2 hours into GW2. I found the class abilities to be lacking in depth (though it's my understanding that they've since expanded on things) and the aesthetics to be far too generic for my tastes.

I wouldn't want FFXIV to fully move to horizontal, I just want some horizontal progression. In 3.x they made secondary stats even more useless than before, heck even primary stats are becomming less useful. I upgraded my Eso 200 weapon to Relic 210, which has 3 weapon damage and 8 INT. The secondary stats are slightly worse, but 3 WD should overshadow them pretty substantially. My DPS went from 1333 to 1343 on a dummy parse. It's a good thing I slaved for hours to get that increase.

On this I can definitely agree with you. I've been wanting more interesting stats for most of the game's life, and I want more "fiddly bits" to consider when making my gearing choices. As it is now, I can map out my preferred gear progression for each job in about 10 minutes without a great deal of thought, just looking at the stuff available on the gear vendors, and that's just not interesting enough for me.

I want to see a third (or fourth!) set of max item level gear per raid tier (which, we might be getting a third if they keep their promise of making crafted gear better) and I'd like to see gear differentiated with more unique characteristics like set bonuses and job-specific modifications. All of that can work in a vertical game (they worked in WoW after all, which is the penultimate vertical game), and although they're harder to balance, it's actually somewhat easier for a vertical game to deal with that imbalance because a problematic set bonus or characteristic can just be phased out in the next raid tier.

Requests I hear are just a full scale change to horizontal which is not realistic in both a sense of the game and business.

I'm aware of requests like that as well, and if you've been reading my posts you'll know that I think they're unrealistic, too. The game does have a little horizontal flavor to its progression, though a lot of it isn't particularly relevant to more active players (I almost never need Void Ark/24-man gear on my main job for instance, as it's long ago been kitted out in tomestone gear), and I'd like to see more horizontal aspects at the highest item level.

But the vertical treadmill's gonna have to stay either way.

[Velhart]

I'm aware of requests like that as well, and if you've been reading my posts you'll know that I think they're unrealistic, too. The game does have a little horizontal flavor to its progression, though a lot of it isn't particularly relevant to more active players (I almost never need Void Ark gear on my main job for instance, as it's long ago bee kitted out in tomestone gear), and I'd like to see more horizontal aspects at the highest item level.

But the vertical treadmill's gonna have to stay either way.

This I can get on board with. More challenging ways to obtain higher level gear. Just a shame SE will say they don't have the resources to do it.

[Alahra]

This I can get on board with. More challenging ways to obtain higher level gear. Just a shame SE will say they don't have the resources to do it.

Personally it doesn't even need to necessarily be challenging to me, but I see ways they could add that in, too. I'd personally like to see EX Primals make a "comeback" as endgame content (like they were in 2.1), and I've often wondered why we can't have a method to upgrade 24-man raid gear to maximum item level. Hell, they could even combine the two: I'd actually do Thordan EX if 10 of the tokens got me an item that could turn a Void Ark piece into i210 (especially if it was dyable).

As it is, I haven't wanted anything from an EX primal since Leviathan because they just aren't worth it if you're going to get max-level weapons through some other means (for me, that's the Zodiac/Anima weapons).

If I got what I always wanted, we'd go back to three difficulty levels per Primal battle—the story battle more like our current Hard Modes, then a Hard Mode that's somewhere in between Garuda/Titan/Ifrit HM and a modern EX primals (with some decent mid-tier rewards like current EX primals usually give), and then EX primals that are more like the original EXes in difficulty (but most especially in rewards, offering max-item level drops of some kind).

[UBERHAXED]

This I can get on board with. More challenging ways to obtain higher level gear. Just a shame SE will say they don't have the resources to do it.

Hmm? We already have 3 (completely distinct) ways to get max ilvl gear. Raiding, tomestones, and Diadem. One of them can have what ever stats you're willing to put the time into finding. We 2 also have ways to get gear just below max ilvl; tomestones and Void Ark.Eventually when there are too many ways, a few of them (the hardest ones) will be ignored and be a waste of development time, so they don't really bother spreading to more than about 3.

[CyrilLucifer]

There seems to be the misunderstanding in this thread that horizontal progression just means more ways to get the same ilevel of gear.

It's not. We still have pure vertical progression in XIV. 3 ways to get iLevel 210 gear is still just iLevel 210 gear that will be pointless next patch cycle.

Horizontal progression would be having no single BiS for all situations, focusing instead on having multiple equipment sets that vary by situation. It would stay at that same iLevel for longer, expanding horizontally in side stat options, rather than up and up in strength.

I'm on the belief that TERA balances vertical and horizontal progression in a way that would suit XIV well, with their more complex materia-like armor additions and the ability to specify sub traits on weapons/armor.

[Velhart]

Hmm? We already have 3 (completely distinct) ways to get max ilvl gear. Raiding, tomestones, and Diadem. One of them can have what ever stats you're willing to put the time into finding. We 2 also have ways to get gear just below max ilvl; tomestones and Void Ark.Eventually when there are too many ways, a few of them (the hardest ones) will be ignored and be a waste of development time, so they don't really bother spreading to more than about 3.

How many of those three pieces of content actually require you to have a strong understanding of your job and group coordination in battle? Savage and Primal EX are the ones that come closest to it.