Info about the Chinese Cash Shop "Level Jumping Potions"

[Laerune]

I realy hope this will never come to FFXIV, this potion is going to be sold, what comes next?

[CosmicKirby]

Well let's hope the developers stop making story content for the future because i'll just potion it all complete, I know it says for content below 3.0 but cash shops never stop there.

Don't really like it, the people who potion it all away will have no understanding of anything, the story, the game, their class, look what happened to wow, bunch of literal scrubs got max lvl and have no idea how to even play. Please SE I beg you, don't turn your game into wow, wow is a garbage can.

You act like this wasn't already the case.

[MugenMugetsu]

Just gonna leave this here as I posted it in another thread about the same topic...

In my experience, I have done everything I can, almost to the point of begging people on my Facebook friendlist to join the game so that I would have more RL friends to play with and because I want to take advantage of the Recruit a Friend campaign and get the Twintania mount. Over the course of months and months, posting here and there on Facebook about the game, offering up a free code to unlock the base game, and posting video after video and reviews of the game, and I can not for the life of me get anyone, out of some 400 people on my Facebook friendlist, to join the game. All but 2 of my RL friends have quit the game with no interest at all in coming back, regardless of what is added to the game. I think we started with about 8 of us and now we're down to me and 2 of my RL friends being the last of the initial group of us who were playing the game together.

With all of this said, basically, what I'm getting at is this game isn't for everyone. There are so many other options available, and at least in my experience, it's hard to get people to join the game. I think the jump potion could definitely be a good thing and make the game more fun for people new to the game who simply want to play with their friends and who may otherwise be discouraged and quit when they find that they have to go through the entireity of all the MSQs available to catch up to their friend(s).

I, for one, do not like the idea of the jump potion. I feel that everyone should experience the game and the story as it was intended to be experienced and they should have to work for everything that they earn in the game with no hand outs, aside from maybe a friend tossing them a little gil to get them started. (Even then I'm not a big fan of that either but I do understand that the newbie struggle is real.) So, to finish this up, I guess, even though I don't like the idea of it, if the jump potion will help retain more new players and help the game thrive, I can grit my teeth and bear it, so to speak.

In short, in my experience it's really frickin' hard to get people to play/join this game, and the retention rate isn't very good either. To add to this, a number of people in my free company left the game to go play Blade and Soul. These people were really into FFXIV and they really did enjoy the game. After they left for Blade and Soul they never came back. Something that makes the game less like work, and more fun could only be beneficial, and if you end up in groups with players who don't know their roles and are unwilling to take advice and learn to play properly, well, there's always the option to Vote Kick.

[tymora]

Actually I played Blade & Soul for a bit and got bored even faster than FFXIV lol...

[mirta000]

In short, in my experience it's really frickin' hard to get people to play/join this game, and the retention rate isn't very good either. To add to this, a number of people in my free company left the game to go play Blade and Soul. These people were really into FFXIV and they really did enjoy the game. After they left for Blade and Soul they never came back. Something that makes the game less like work, and more fun could only be beneficial, and if you end up in groups with players who don't know their roles and are unwilling to take advice and learn to play properly, well, there's always the option to Vote Kick.

1. No MMO is for everyone. I had very good retention rates of those that were interested in it in the first place, however I can't force non MMOers, or different kind of MMOers to come on over.
2. My guild has people that play BnS. Their patches are impossible to keep up with if you want to be competitive. It's literally 14-16 hours of work DAILY with same geared 3 extra individuals. If you're starting right now, you can't even get pugs, because people will see you as waste of time. Either that of you can shell out 3000 euros for top rated gear.
3. You can't vote kick at the start of the dungeon.

[MugenMugetsu]

Actually I played Blade & Soul for a bit and got bored even faster than FFXIV lol...

Well, not sure what my FC mates found to be so great about it that they never came back to the game, but their never having come back is an example that currently, for a lot of people, this game just doesn't have the content/fun/whatever that really makes some people want to stick with it. I know that the vast majority of us here on the forums love the game. That's why we're here on the forums. We have a passion for the game that leads us to spend time outside the game on a forum for the game so that we can talk about the game. The problem I've seen over the course of time that I've been playing, which is since December 2010, if not a little bit before then, is that for some reason, people play this game for a while and then they quit and move on and don't come back. Now I understand that there are plenty of exceptions considering a lot of people take breaks from the game, but even the friends that I was playing the game with around the launch of ARR and for some time after, who are avid FF fans, have quit with no interest of ever coming back.

To me it seems that either there is a problem with the current model, or the game is missing something that I can't quite put my finger on that would increase player retention. With this particular thread being about the jump potion, and while I have stated that I don't really like the idea of people being allowed to essentially not "earn" their way to level 50 or whatever content the potion would unlock for them, I feel that it may at least increase the number of people who would join and actually stick with the game for whatever amount of time that they find the game to be enjoyable for them. I've emphasized how hard a time that I personally have had with getting even just one person to join the game. Just....ONE.....person. So, when a new player joins the game to play with their friends, it could potentially be beneficial to allow them to skip a lot of the "work" so that they can get to the "fun", if end game content is more along the lines of what they consider fun with their preference being to run end game content rather than having to get through all of the MSQs and low level content first.

A lot of people say, well if a new person joins they can still play with their friend(s) and they can just do low level content. While this is a very true and valid statement, not only does it hinder the existing players progress, as they have to take the extra time to also do low level content to help their new player friend, but it could still cause the new player to not want to continue playing the game when they find that they have to do so much content to even get to the endgame content which could potentially be the primary reason why they wanted to play the game in the first place so that they could run endgame content with their friend who recruited them. Or they may not want to have to spend so much of their free time to game, having to go through so many MSQs and so much low level content, before they could be near being on the same level as the friend who recruited them.

Edit: To add to this, there are a lot of people who say that if we allow players to skip content they won't know how to properly play their jobs because they will have been boosted to level 50, have many skills available, and no idea how to properly use said skills which will cause for us to have bad experiences dealing with these players. In some cases this may be true, but with the number of guides available on the internet and with this game being incredibly easy to pick up and play, I would have to say that any monkey with half a brain willing to dedicate their time to learning how to play their job efficiently will have no problem whatsoever picking up and playing the game. Seriously, there's not really that much content in the game that is even remotely difficult and learning to play any job in the game is really not that difficult. I think we can all agree that 99% of this game is casual content.

[SaitoHikari]

> People beg SE not to region lock items anymore
> SE responds by releasing something people WANT to region lock

Anyway that crap aside, this thing is pretty much guaranteed to be exclusive to China. It's a matter of culture, something like this happens in every game that has a Chinese version separate from all the rest. They're not afraid of throwing balance and stability to the wind in order to have an opportunity to flaunt their status around.

Source: I played another game that had a pay to win cash shop for the Chinese version, and the differences were so vast that Chinese players were expected to have 20-30% better stats than the top end players in any other version. Unfortunately the Chinese version was also far and away the most profitable version, which led to questionable design decisions for the base game that was only really designed for that service region while messing with the economy in most others (as in, MASSIVE gold sinks where enhancing a piece of endgame gear could only cost about 1% of your gold in the Chinese version due to the massive amount of gold in their economy. But with how the NA economy worked, that same piece of gear could cost you about 10-15% in comparison and would also be much harder to gain back in a short amount of time).

[mirta000]

Well, not sure what my FC mates found to be so great about it that they never came back to the game, but their never having come back is an example that currently, for a lot of people, this game just doesn't have the content/fun/whatever that really makes some people want to stick with it. I know that the vast majority of us here on the forums love the game.

welcome to literally any MMO ever. And I mean it. As a guild leader in GW2. As a person that played WoW, this is a problem with EVERY MMO.

And also, yes there are guides online. Some with 60 PAGES OR MORE. Learning to properly play a class in FFXIV is a real undertaking and normally requires someone to train you. Fortunately the leveling process gives you one ability at a time, teaching you how to slowly combo them together. But take them out and you have people with a lot of buttons and no idea what they do.

[Remus]

Not sure what this topic was suppose to do but the China version isn't the same as ours. They can't play for long periods of time like we can so they have those in place, if i remember correctly they pay per hour to play instead of a subscription. Those stuff will never come here so i'm not sure why people are getting their knickers in a twist. They have had that for such a long time already if SE was going to add it they would have done already before. Instead of looking at just the cash shop actually do a bit more research on how the game is actually handled before going to conclusions like some people have =_=

[mirta000]

Not sure what this topic was suppose to do but the China version isn't the same as ours. They can't play for long periods of time like we can so they have those in place, if i remember correctly they pay per hour to play instead of a subscription. Those stuff will never come here so i'm not sure why people are getting their knickers in a twist. They have had that for such a long time already if SE was going to add it they would have done already before. Instead of looking at just the cash shop actually do a bit more research on how the game is actually handled before going to conclusions like some people have =_=

it's because of the recent interview where they said "we're considering adding it for 4.0".