Why is Yoshi P turning his back on the playerbase that loves this game the most?

[Talraen]

A lot of the sentiment in this thread really push my buttons. I spent years in FFXI not being able to finish plotlines because it was so hard to find help if you didn't have a good linkshell. The 'content' in that game was mostly sitting in towns looking for parties to do literally anything, including level, which was done by fighting the same mobs over and over for hours. Let's please not ever go back to that.

There is a definite survivorship bias to these sentiments. If you had a good group in FFXI and did a lot of high-end content, the game was great. However, most people didn't, which is why, while the game did great numbers for a pre-WoW MMO, it peaked at less than 5% of WoW's subscribership. Having content only some people can ever do is a bad thing, because it turns away more players than it attracts.

To directly address the title of the thread, Yoshi P is turning his back on you because he doesn't need you. You're either going to stick around no matter what happens to the game, or maybe you'll quit. You - meaning those looking for hardcore, exclusive, top-end content in this case - are a small minority, but you pay the same subscription fee as the larger numbers who don't want those things and see them as a negative. (or in many cases think they want these things, but would be driven away from the game if they actually became reality)

Honestly, if you want a hardcore MMO, that's great - but it's not going to be Final Fantasy XIV. This is a game which Square spent a ton of money to reboot from the ground up rather than allow it to fail. They are looking for a big audience, and that means lowest-common-denominator content. Hardcore MMOs are a niche, so please go track down a niche game instead of trying to get them to ruin a game I, and many others, still quite like. Thanks!

[Reynhart]

A lot of the sentiment in this thread really push my buttons. I spent years in FFXI not being able to finish plotlines because it was so hard to find help if you didn't have a good linkshell. The 'content' in that game was mostly sitting in towns looking for parties to do literally anything, including level, which was done by fighting the same mobs over and over for hours. Let's please not ever go back to that.

As long as the Duty Finder exists and people use it to gain experience or other rewards, this problem will never arise in XIV.
Besides, in FFXI, you couldn't progress without having at least three hours to spare. Any less, and you're back to square one. XIV doesn't design its content that way. We may want more challenging content, but we don't ask for 2 hours dungeons that you must do in one setting.

To directly address the title of the thread, Yoshi P is turning his back on you because he doesn't need you. You're either going to stick around no matter what happens to the game, or maybe you'll quit. You - meaning those looking for hardcore, exclusive, top-end content in this case - are a small minority

Problem is, you don't know that. As you said, most of us are still paying for the game wether we like its design or not, because we've already invested time in it. But no one can say exactly how many subscriptions will be lost if every unpleased player quit the game. And it would be a great mistake to think than only harcore players have issues with the game.

[Talraen]

Of course it's not only the hardcore players who have issues, but making the game more hardcore is not the solution to their issues.

The reason these hardcore games are so well loved is because the people who didn't love them stopped playing them entirely. For example, I loved 1.0. And I don't mean 1.23, I mean the original release, particularly it's completely unapproachable and ridiculous crafting system. That was totally my jam. Does the fact that a few hundred people (if I'm being generous) thought this was the greatest system ever mean that it was a good system? Of course not, because the vast majority of people hated it. It's easy to cater to a small group who will love your game, but if the vast majority stop playing as a result, you've still failed.

FFXIV, flawed as it is, is more popular than FFXI ever was. What possible basis do you have to conclude that making a popular game more like a less popular game will improve its popularity?

[Reynhart]

FFXIV, flawed as it is, is more popular than FFXI ever was. What possible basis do you have to conclude that making a popular game more like a less popular game will improve its popularity?

We don't. However, we're pretty sure that keeping the same formula over and over and over again will make it boring for everyone sooner or later.
And that "We're keeping the same formula because we don't want people feeling encouraged to put more hours into the game" is a crappy excuse for an MMO producer.

[Shai]

If I may be allowed to paraphrase Fizzle...

I think the real gripe here isn't that SE owes us more. It's that they never delivered what was promised. The promises have been outlined in this thread. Various people have mentioned the general sentiment of the paying Legacy members of 1.0. We were led to believe that ARR would be the end result of the work done on 1.23B. Yes. We voted to scrap Tanaka's XIV and rebuild the game, but that's what we thought Yoshida was doing. We thought when the game came back online it would ... resemble the game he had been "rebuilding" that we were playing. News flash: It doesn't. I'm not weighing in on whether that was good or bad, but I will tell you it felt like he was practically begging us to hang in there and wait for what we were all waiting for - then surprised us with what ARR is today.

He pleaded with us to hang in there and to trust him for a better future. We liked the game and wanted it to succeed so we listened. He rewarded us with ... this.

Do I think I'm owed something beside a discount? No, not really. Do I feel like I was tricked? Yes, I certainly do.

To be quite honest with you, I don't even believe the results of the 1.0 polls. Maybe that's just the conspiracy theorist in me, but there's no accountability. We could have "voted" for whatever they say we voted for. I could ask you all to vote on whether ARR is a good game, you email me your votes, and come back without any evidence saying you hate ARR in a landslide! That's basically what they did with 1.0 polls. It was all hidden, but people still toss the polls around as if they were real community agendas.

[Chiramu]

I could ask you all to vote on whether ARR is a good game, email me your votes, and come back without any evidence saying you hate ARR in a landslide!

ARR was a success. I have no problems with ARR aside from the slow main story up to the 2.0 ending(the writing got better paced after that). My problem lies with the tedium of Heavensward. When we all entered it was all good, it was new and we had lots to do. At level 60 it was fine, we had the goal of attaining the gear set with tomestones. Esoterics were released and we could get the armour shown to us in the trailer. Then, the next set of tomestones and the next gearset. Maybe the grind in ARR wasn't as bad as HW because the dungeons were more fun to run?

But the problem was never ARR.

[Shai]

ARR was a success.

But the problem was never ARR.

Um. What?

I said: I could poll you. You email me your votes. Then I come back and say the vast majority of you all hate it and want me to throw it away and make a new game. This is effectively what Yoshida did. There's no accountability. No 3rd party counting the votes. It was an online poll. The results could be whatever Square Enix wanted them to be.

Do people read before they leap to the defense of XIV? I never said anything about the quality of ARR and I make no distinction between ARR and HW unless we're talking about the MSQ content because they are literally the exact same thing. Grind Tomes Reborn.

[Chiramu]

Do people read before they leap to the defense of XIV? I never said anything about the quality of ARR and I make no distinction between ARR and HW unless we're talking about the MSQ content because they are literally the exact same thing. Grind Tomes Reborn.

Did you read before you quoted me? I never defended FFXIV, ARR was a good game. We are in Heavensward, if you have a problem, it is with Heavensward or you are stuck in the past.

[Reynhart]

Do I think I'm owed something beside a discount? No, not really. Do I feel like I was tricked? Yes, I certainly do.

Did you read before you quoted me? I never defended FFXIV, ARR was a good game. We are in Heavensward, if you have a problem, it is with Heavensward or you are stuck in the past.

I also thinks Heavensward is the problem. Frankly, Shai, when ARR was released, did you really feel tricked ? The more interesting zones, the faster combat system where you don't have to wait for your TP to build, the more mechanic-oriented boss fights, the more stable and more responding servers, the less reliance on RNG for just about everything in the game...did you really feel tricked at that time ?

I think what tricked us is that Yoshi-P literally said that HW would be the time to remove the kid's glove, and indeed, it was...for Alex Savage...but for everything else, HW is weaker than ARR. The only thing that I think most people will agree is that the story is far better (Sultana's plot notwithstanding) , and I think this is also tied to 1.xx.

Lots of characters and plot points in ARR where sequels of 1.xx, so that new players probably had a hard time connecting with those. The scions' past, Gaius, and the whole Bahamut's presence didn't mean much for them. For us Legacy players, however, every twist gave us a big grin. Seeing F'lhammin again, seeing Nael and Louisoix in Coil (Turn 9 is literally a love letter to us), fulfilling the long promise that we'll enter Ishgard, etc...that was also part of our "reward".

To be honest, when I saw HW mutliple trailers, with a darker mood, big zones where you'll fly to explore, etc...I thought that HW would be very different from ARR and I was thrilled...months later, I realized that this was painfully the same game in every aspect.

[Shai]

Did you read before you quoted me? I never defended FFXIV, ARR was a good game. We are in Heavensward, if you have a problem, it is with Heavensward or you are stuck in the past.

What the heck are you talking about? Why are you quoting me?
You aren't even responding to what I'm saying.
It's like I'm saying "Hey, the sky is a nice shade of blue."
And you're saying "Apples are green, man. They're green."

I don't understand you.