Unofficial Census 2016 for FFXIV

[Tolmos]

The coffin lid is a perfect example, I paid 15 mil for one back in January, if I had known to wait two months so I could buy one for 50k I would have. How am I supposed to feel when a game devalues my coffin lid by 14,950,000 gil?

I might have my coffin, but I am not getting my 15 mil back. That time was wasted. Literally wasted. Should the coffin lid drop rate been buffed? Yes. Should it drop every single run in VA? NO NO NO NO NO. It's really not my problem anymore bub, this game has these issues and it will continue to bleed subs because nothing feels worthwhile. You guys can beat your chest like this is some childish position for us to hold, but you are only hurting your game.

For that 15 mil, you got to have the coffin lid early. Yes, other players later got to have it as well, but for the time that you had it you were one of the few. You got to have your status symbol, and that time is what your money went towards. It was, indeed, your choice to drop the $15,000,000. Buyers remorse does suck, but I can't say I would have been as unhappy with my purchase in your hoes since I would have gained something from it.

That said, I still struggle to understand where the issue is. :-\ Maybe it's an age thing, and I'm just getting old, but I fail to see how schadenfreude is supposed to increase my enjoyment of the game, and how the lack of it is supposed to be a death blow to the game.

[Ibi]

This is a perfect example on why the rewards in raiding just don't cut it. If Savage is going to continue to exist, it should be rewarded like mythic in wow.

Come on, we literally went over this last night.

• Mythic has many exclusive rewards and does not have higher participation rates than Savage.
• Heroic does not have exclusive rewards and does have significantly higher participation rates than Savage.

If you're not able to look at those two pieces of information and infer that the lack of exclusive rewards isn't what's keeping people from raiding Savage, you're simply not approaching the issue logically.

[zosia]

For that 15 mil, you got to have the coffin lid early. Yes, other players later got to have it as well, but for the time that you had it you were one of the few. You got to have your status symbol, and that time is what your money went towards. It was, indeed, your choice to drop the $15,000,000. Buyers remorse does suck, but I can't say I would have been as unhappy with my purchase in your hoes since I would have gained something from it.

That said, I still struggle to understand where the issue is. :-\ Maybe it's an age thing, and I'm just getting old, but I fail to see how schadenfreude is supposed to increase my enjoyment of the game, and how the lack of it is supposed to be a death blow to the game.

It's not a matter of schadenfreude, it's being frustrated that you climb your personal mountain top (Raiding, minions, glamour, housing, etc), only to see an elevator put in 1-3 months later. Now, when you come across your next personal mountain top (a new raid, minion, glamour, funiture, etc) are you more likely to climb the mountain every time or are you going to wait on the elevator?

That's the problem of the game. Did I come whine on the forums when the coffin lid was made into common place trash items? Nope. Will I ever work on saving gil to buy 15 mil furniture again? Nope. Will I ever buy glamours when they are current. Nope, I saw what happened with the thavnarian set. As a matter of fact, I won't buy any vanity items until the end of an expansion, because I could be paying a 300% mark up for no good reason, like with the coffin lid.

You don't see this as a problem? There is no reason for people to stay subbed. People can literally wait to sub for the right month, blitz through all the content and rewards, and unsub. This is not even about a rarity problem or feeling like a special snowflake.

Smart consumers are probably only playing this game for 1/4th of the months out of the year. There is no way to keep players in the game and subbed since there are no real long term goals.

[odintius]

So what I got out of this is people just stay unsub even after a new patch is release wait a few months for nerfs to save some gil ect, because it really not worth the effort to be put into anyways. >.>

[zosia]

Come on, we literally went over this last night.

• Mythic has many exclusive rewards and does not have higher participation rates than Savage.
• Heroic does not have exclusive rewards and does have significantly higher participation rates than Savage.

If you're not able to look at those two pieces of information and infer that the lack of exclusive rewards isn't what's keeping people from raiding Savage, you're simply not approaching the issue logically.

Mythic and Heroic do have exclusive rewards from Normal. Titles, mounts, special quests, etc are rewarded to both Heroic and Mythic. Why do you want raiders to feel short changed in this game? Why can a 13 yr old dinosaur of a game reward raiders and this glorified dumpster fire can't?

We have people saying on the forums that raid rewards are not worth it. It's their opinion and it's not up for debate. They have a point when you look at what heroic/mythic raids provide players in wow. I feel the rewards are not worth it and you can contrast savage with mythic/heroic for that purpose. FFXIV raiders are treated like absolute garbage.

I have replaced some of the most talented players I have ever had on my roster over how poorly raiders are rewarded in this game. You are simply taking two stats and saying that since they are the same, that rewards have nothing to do with the poor participation rates. Correlation does not equal causation here bud. I only speak from the players that post here and the players I have seen leave this game, the raid rewards are very poor and savage requires and exceptional amount of effort.

Like I keep telling people here, this game is going LotRO status fast, it will be a joke MMO by the next expansion. It's not my problem buddy, keep defending the dumpster fire, the reward structure of this game will keep people subbed for ever!!!! /s

[aesteval]

That said, I still struggle to understand where the issue is... but I fail to see how schadenfreude is supposed to increase my enjoyment of the game...

I think part of the issue comes down to more general player engagement and less about personal accomplishment. Having an attainable goal to accomplish will keep a player engaged over a period of time. Nerfing something may eventually boost interest in that activity at time of nerf, but being able to predict the nerf is also going to dissuade some players to putting forth the effort earlier. Some of the drop rates and decisions are really erratic. In the coffin lid case it was way too rare when it was rare and is now way too common now that it isn't rare. The drop rate went from one extreme to another and lacks any sort of balance. I think I may also have to agree on the drop rate on Thavnairian gear with Aquapolis. Incentive needs to be balanced somewhere.

[Thayos]

Ibi and Zosia, both of you are talking about fundamentally different (yet equally important) things.

Zosia, you're saying that raiders won't put in the time to raid unless the rewards are good. And that seems logical.

Ibi, you're saying that improving the rewards in raiding won't suddenly cause people who dislike raiding to suddenly start enjoying raids. That also seems logical!

Both of these things are true. That's why I keep repeating that ultimately -- even if raids were to drop gear that automatically scaled to be the highest-level drops for the rest of the game's life -- SE needs to diversify the endgame scene so there's more to do than raiding.

SE must address both points.

That said, my feeling is Ibi's point is taking a much larger toll on XIV's population than the issue of whether the raid community is happy, because raiders have always made up such a small portion of the overall playerbase. Raiding is an old-school endgame mentality that really is going out of style with both younger gamers and older, busier gamers.

[Erudito]

*Looks at unofficial census* Hmm...
*Looks at last official census* Uh, the amount of active subs is declining at a somewhat fast rate.

Since this is a pay-to-play MMO I can see people leaving since you can't pay $14 (minimum) a month forever but seeing those numbers, its somewhat distressing. People also need a break now and then, we are not machines.
SE still makes a pretty penny with the amount of current active subs alone + mogstation but they are losing us fast.

How should they go about their content to increase sub retention? Should they add content or shorten/ease/change content already present? Both?

For me, PvP is a big no since peoples drive (or obsession or even insane desire) for victory sucks the fun away fast (again, for me) so they can try to fiddle with that a little, but lots of people have already asked for that here. For me, its the jobs. The jobs are designed and tuned for PvE, they have little to no proficiency against other players. If a job does, its the odd job out. Most jobs can only take out one person (barely) and then they have to use just about every single ability and then you are a sitting duck mostly due to long cooldowns, until then, you can barely damage anyone, let alone hurt an Astrologian or a Warrior if you are alone or even with another person. Again, not useful against actual people as you are easily outnumbered, stunned or (in the case of all casters) interrupted. To boot, the escape or "Oh crud!" abilities all tend to have large cooldowns making them even more useless in pvp scenarios.

Savage raiding is also a no for people like me, who don't have the time to waste endlessly wiping to bosses just for learning the fight so that, several days or weeks later, you can down it. Story mode raid is good this expansion since savage Alexander (all of it) is just downright troll difficulty. I wonder if returning to the old ways of Coil is a good more to keep people interested? Just... keep the token system or something, loot getting in Coil was painful.

I am liking Palace of the Dead though, they have to add more versatile traps, floor types, monster mechanics and, above all, more types of rewards from the random bronze chests there. Nothing too fancy or unique either, basic mats for crafting would do. And for the love of all that is good, if that is already in the works, do NOT place anything unique in those chests. Make it something you can find someplace else or things are gonna go bad fast.

Just adding to the discussion, don't shoot me

[Ceasaria]

First off, it kills off a lot of the hype and anticipation behind the story and big reveals. I can only imagine how anticlimactic it would've been to defeat Nael van Darnus, Louisoix, or Bahamut if all it took was 10 minutes with maybe a single wipe. These enemies are supposed to be a threat to the realm. They should feel more substantial to defeat.

For me, it's really the problem for our trials right now. I beat Thordan and Nidhogg so easily, this is ridiculous.
When I did the extreme version, mostly Thordan Ex, I said myself : "This is the true fight. This is what I should have had the first time I fought Thordan." which get the power of the eye of Nidhogg, and 1000 years of prayers."
I know we're talking about raiding, but trials suffer the same problem : the story for normal mode...
We should have the possibility to select which difficulty mode we want to have for the content we want to do.

[Critical-Limit]

So what I got out of this is people just stay unsub even after a new patch is release wait a few months for nerfs to save some gil ect, because it really not worth the effort to be put into anyways. >.>

That's what I did, I quit the game when leviathan extreme came out. I came back 1 month after the expansion release.

I not only caught up to my friend who was playing for 2 years straight in a couple months. But I easily got everything they did before me 30x easier.

I got more irl things done as a result, and... I have all the same things as someone who's put in infinitely more time than me.