Yoshi-P on Character Growth

[Istaru]

I have typed and deleted a few responses at this point. All I have left on feelings about gear and progression at this point is "whatever".

The devs have their vision of this game and they are going to run with it no matter what. For the most part, unless they have a mass exodus of a large number of people at one time, they will not deviate in any significant way. Even if I don't like that fact, I accept it.

Before some smartass says it, I'm not leaving this game to play a different one. If it isn't a FF MMO, I have zero interest in it.

[Alexander_Dragonfang]

well this is where we differ while you are saying 1/4 i am say the number is lower like 1/10

but they you say but look at the numbers! what numbers? what number of players are we suppose to have at all times? 500k? 1million? 2million?
the game caters towards the players who won't burn out due to not being able to do everything super fast and likely to never unsub.



what's to argue? the numbers are not subs, and the numbers are not accurate you can say oh but they are 10% wrong or 20% wrong but that shows that you don't even know if the number are true so why would i believe something you don't even know?

The highest we possibly can at all time.

Ideally, all servers should have Balmung population and activity. That should be the "end goal". Not "Is ok people leaves, if the game is booring, when you return will feel fresh again".

[Centershock]

what's to argue? the numbers are not subs, and the numbers are not accurate you can say oh but they are 10% wrong or 20% wrong but that shows that you don't even know if the number are true so why would i believe something you don't even know?

The argument is that the data you keep arguing as fake is not as fake as you think it is. It is data-mined from Lodestone. You know, the thing that SE has for FFXIV characters.

The census never once said it was indicative of how many subscriptions it has. All it really does is show how many "characters" (again, not subs) have completed what, how far along they are in the MSQ, etc etc. They even go to explain what they thought was an "active character."

It is not, again, a number of how many people are subbed into the game. But a number of "characters" have done X and Y achievements. You can disbelieve this all you want. This is, for all intents and purposes, real. They didn't just pull numbers out of their behinds or make things up.

[OliviaJ]

The highest we possibly can at all time.

Ideally, all servers should have Balmung population and activity. That should be the "end goal". Not "Is ok people leaves, if the game is booring, when you return will feel fresh again".

Bleh. Balmung sounds horrible to me. I'm not saying it's a horrible server because obviously a lot of people flock to it. I also hate large populated cities IRL, so medium pop servers are great. We all have different tastes though and you can't please everyone.

Ghost towns are a problem though. There has to be SOME people on it to do things with.

[ZhaneX]

Said it once, so I'll say it again.

I can really get behind what Yoshi-P's saying about progression and end game. FFXIV is the first MMO I've ever played where I actually hit the level cap at all, let alone went on to hit the cap on everything. Still, now that I've reached that point, I do feel a bit listless, just trying to catch up to the absolute pinnacle of the end game. It does sound like they've got plenty of plans in the future to help alleviate such boredom, and I for one look forward to seeing it, however far ahead that may be.

[Musashidon]

The highest we possibly can at all time.

Ideally, all servers should have Balmung population and activity. That should be the "end goal". Not "Is ok people leaves, if the game is booring, when you return will feel fresh again".

but now we are arguing which gaming group will net more players, if you make it so players are less likely to leave due to stuff to do (which is grind gear) you lose the players who can't play as much and will leave due to having to do so much.

which leaves will changing it so less people leave due to burn out, out weigh the people leaving because they can't do anything anymore or lost the interest do to getting no where now?

this is the whole thing to me. i believe the amount of players we will have at all times will always be higher than if we catered to the group burning out.

my example: always 500k or above. 500k at its lowest 1mil around the highest while the other group would be say be around 200k all the time due to less leaving and coming back. (but this is just my opinion)

They didn't just pull numbers out of their behinds or make things up.

i already understand how the data was gotten.

you can filter the lodestone but it will never give you the actual numbers of players and saying it's close or the actual numbers is a lie.

[Nalien]

Ah, I understand if that's the kind of content you personally enjoy. I believe they are trying to gather to that kind of players as well with the long weapon quests. Also, gear progression requires you to cap weekly, so that's another goal that takes at least over a month. I don't know, I understand you'd prefer upgrading the weapon of your choice (like I'd prefer a dyeing system that lets me choose several colours per piece, instead of just one), but the current system isn't bad either, is it? ;_;

As I said earlier, I think the idea is to have a game that is both "easy to pick up", and "hard to put down". You want the former so that people can get into it easily, and minus Heavensward being gated behind 2.55, XIV does a great job of that. The later though... No, this game is so easy to pick up, that it's easy to put down... I could quit today and come back for 4.4 and catch up pretty damn quickly... There's not really much here to retain my interest... I continue to play out of good faith for the developers, and just to support them, because things like the world and music are amazing IMO (although the world is woefully underused, the game is more of a glorified lobby for the Duty Finder at this point), it's just the gameplay where things start falling apart IMO... I could sit here and pick apart all the content in this game, but I don't think any of use have time for that... Diadem alone is probably a 10,000 word essay...

Item level, I think, is an absolutely terrible form of progression... If they want to effectively reset progression every other patch, then fine... I get why they do that, it makes the game easier to pick up... Give me some alternative means of progression though, give me something I can work on throughout the game, that perhaps has me doing all sorts of content... Relics Weapons could be that, Relic Armor would be an amazing addition... Right now though, the Relic quests are really quite bad, IMO... Zodiac quests are better IMO, they at least feel like a quest. Anima weapons are just directionless though... I get why they gave us so many options for them, but the result is just that I don't do anything to get the weapon... If I wanted a Zodiac weapon, I had to go out of my way to finish it... If I want an Anima weapon? I'm already bleeding Gil/Grand Company Seals/Poetics/Esoterics because this game throws them at me for pretty much everything... I put no extra effort into my Anima weapon, I just kept PvPing and got all the resources I needed off that... The result is that the grind just isn't entertaining... I want to actually do something for that reward... I'd liken it to climbing Mount Everest... The reward for that is in the doing, but XIV has effectively put me at the summit because, to quote my pedometer "You've climbed X flights of stairs! That's the height of Mount Everest!"

[Welsper59]

I want him doing content so he fights to the death against legion for every single player. I've done a better job to keep players playing this game than he has.

...



Didn't know being a conspiracy theorist against the game actually caused more players to play it than the folks that actually make the game. We live in a weird ass era, if that's true. Also, grats on getting your word out across all languages and actually being hailed as doing a better job than him.

[Alexander_Dragonfang]

Didn't know being a conspiracy theorist against the game actually caused more players to play it than the folks that actually the game. We live in a weird ass era, if that's true. Also, grats on getting your word out across all languages and actually being hailed as doing a better job than him.

Im not a conspiracy theorist against the game. Nothing i have said about it is a conspiracy. Yoshida thinks is ok for players to leave his game when they get bored and then come back.

And, i think is rather obvious, that what i said was meant to be ingame, not forums.

[Zumi]

I really like the way FFXIV is set up. You get a new raid and gear every 6 months with a catch up patch in between. I never get bored of playing FFXIV because a new raid always comes out in 6 months giving me a new bis gear set to work for along with new dungeons to do. There is no huge grind to level up your character post level cap like in FFXI.

If you look at FFXI SEs other MMO. It has a lot of post level cap grinding in the form of merit points and job points. Both merit and job points are a very huge grind but when you grind them out your character becomes much stronger. But what happens with this it makes the gap for new or returning players so huge they will not be able to catch up and do the new content. With FFXIV its easy for new or returning players to get caught up and play the game.