New Lucky Bancho Census 12/1/17

[Ghastly]

Having few people getting through raids is not unique to FFXIV. Raiders are a small (but highly visible and vocal) minority in most MMOs.

Basically this, very loud, a lot of mmos die because of them. Not all are like that but in general devs cater to them. FFXIV is like the only/one of the few mmo that doesn't focus 80% of the development on them.

[Dualgunner]

Basically this, very loud, a lot of mmos die because of them. Not all are like that but in general devs cater to them. FFXIV is like the only/one of the few mmo that doesn't focus 80% of the development on them.

Citations? Examples? Proof that the game's raiding population is what caused those MMOs to die?

[basketofseals]

Citations? Examples? Proof that the game's raiding population is what caused those MMOs to die?

Well there's WoW: Warlords of Draenor that managed to lose nearly 5 million subscribers in 6 months. Anyone who played then can tell you any feature outside of raiding received criminal levels of neglect.

It is definitely possible to focus too hard on the most visible minority, because within a month over 80% of of players, that is to say the players that weren't interested in even the easiest version of a raid that has a difficulty of easier than an extreme primal, had absolutely nothing to do. WoD lost nearly a million subscribers a month of a good reason.

[Ilan]

Well there's WoW: Warlords of Draenor that managed to lose nearly 5 million subscribers in 6 months. Anyone who played then can tell you any feature outside of raiding received criminal levels of neglect.

It is definitely possible to focus too hard on the most visible minority, because within a month over 80% of of players, that is to say the players that weren't interested in even the easiest version of a raid that has a difficulty of easier than an extreme primal, had absolutely nothing to do. WoD lost nearly a million subscribers a month of a good reason.

WoW lost players because the whole content was crap and not because of the raiders. Its completly the fault of Blizzard for release that add on, but they didn't do that for the evil minority.

[basketofseals]

WoW lost players because the whole content was crap and not because of the raiders. Its completly the fault of Blizzard for release that add on, but they didn't do that for the evil minority.

That's the equivalent of blaming Gordias for the sub crash we witnessed in 3.1 while ignoring the only additional content released in a near eight month span were Thordan EX, Void Ark, Lord of Verminion and Diadem. The devs weren't focusing on raiding to any greater extent. They simply released content no one liked.

I don't understand why I'm being argued against. This is the point I'm also making. I'm not running on insane troll logic and trying to say releasing quality raid content is a bad thing in a vacuum, but focusing on that entirely can be to the detriment to the game as a whole as it's not a feature most of the playerbase has a vested interest in.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I don't understand why I'm being argued against. This is the point I'm also making. I'm not running on insane troll logic and trying to say releasing quality raid content is a bad thing in a vacuum, but focusing on that entirely can be to the detriment to the game as a whole as it's not a feature most of the playerbase has a vested interest in.

Were you just making a general statement? I interpreted your reference to Warlords of Draenor as WoW losing subscriptions based primarily on their raid being too difficult, hence the comparison. If that wasn't the case, my apologies.

The first part I find weird, while I agree with the second part. It is not like teenagers and young adults stopped existing as we got older and moved on from 11. Their are still age groups with the same if not more time to waste on entertainment/social endeavors. Also mainstream should mean that the pool is much larger to draw people with free time.

They aren't the target demographic is more what I mean. Games are designed nowadays to keep young adults and adults entertained because they have far more disposable income but less time to decide towards exceedingly long grinds. As for the pool, it's actually shrunk since people have more choices between which MMO they'll invest their time into. You didn't have the multitude of F2P you see now. It's partly why WoW will never be dethroned.

[basketofseals]

Were you just making a general statement? I interpreted your reference to Warlords of Draenor as WoW losing subscriptions based primarily on their raid being too difficult, hence the comparison. If that wasn't the case, my apologies.

It looks like it's partly my fault. I was more trying to use that as an example of development resources being too focused on one vocal minority can easily cause problems. WoW's raids aren't too difficult. In fact at their lowest difficulty setting, they're even easier than FFXIV 24 man raids, but they still have a relatively low clear rate. What makes WoD a good example though is because raids were essentially the only completely developed content for the entire expansion. Nearly all other features were cut, dropped, or just otherwise under performed. From other's confusion it appears I just didn't explain myself well enough.

Because the original post in the chain isn't just blaming the dev's for making content aimed at a relatively small % of players. It's blaming the players that content was made for, which is insane.

I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. I would never think that players are the problem. In fact I'm very glad FFXIV got super savage even though it's the kind of super niche content that I'm wary about. It's nice that it's in the game. I just don't want it to be something the devs spend a lot of their time on. Unless of course it's beneficial to the game in other ways. There was a lot of twitch coverage on people doing Ultimate Coils, so maybe I'll have to wait and see how that turns out.

[CosmicKirby]

I don't understand why I'm being argued against. This is the point I'm also making. I'm not running on insane troll logic and trying to say releasing quality raid content is a bad thing in a vacuum, but focusing on that entirely can be to the detriment to the game as a whole as it's not a feature most of the playerbase has a vested interest in.

Because the original post in the chain isn't just blaming the dev's for making content aimed at a relatively small % of players. It's blaming the players that content was made for, which is insane.


MMOs are strong because they provide a wide breadth of content in a social atmosphere, they're considerably weaker if they lose some of all of that breadth on focus on only a few things.

There are MMOs with really good pvp and nothing else, they die off.
There are MMOs that had really good raids and nothing else, Wildstar is dying off.
There are MMOs with no real raids and are just social or glamour based, most honestly fall into this, look at any number of Korean MMOs or even social MMOs like second life or VR chat.

Warlords of Draenor had a TON of problems. The fact that the only actual good parts of the expansion, the leveling and raids, were the only good parts doesn't mean one gets to blame raiders. That expansion was aborted in so many ways it begs to be forgotten. It underwent an entire re-write from a story perspective one patch through, it's a time-travel to an alternate dimension side story that had literally ONE plot point carry over into the future game before it was forgotten, an entire raid tier was cut out for a poor fascimile of 'player housing' that resembles a mobile game, features advertised on the freaking box were cut. (So even THEN, the claim that 'raiding killed Warlords' is a horrible cherry pick of a statement, because an entire raid tier was cut for other non raid content, and it also ruined the story with it as well. The entire second act of story in Warlords is gone and the 3rd act was hastily re-written to fit this decision.)

Comparing anything that isn't near brand-suicide to Warlords isn't doing justice to how bad Warlords was.


So in short, I don't blame any player for wanting content that caters to them, that's fine. But don't go blaming raiders for wanting content they want, claiming it kills the game, and then back off and say, "What? You're agreeing with me see! Only one kind of content is bad!"

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Well there's WoW: Warlords of Draenor that managed to lose nearly 5 million subscribers in 6 months. Anyone who played then can tell you any feature outside of raiding received criminal levels of neglect.

It is definitely possible to focus too hard on the most visible minority, because within a month over 80% of of players, that is to say the players that weren't interested in even the easiest version of a raid that has a difficulty of easier than an extreme primal, had absolutely nothing to do. WoD lost nearly a million subscribers a month of a good reason.

That's the equivalent of blaming Gordias for the sub crash we witnessed in 3.1 while ignoring the only additional content released in a near eight month span were Thordan EX, Void Ark, Lord of Verminion and Diadem. The devs weren't focusing on raiding to any greater extent. They simply released content no one liked.

[Cakekizyy]

Well there's WoW: Warlords of Draenor that managed to lose nearly 5 million subscribers in 6 months. Anyone who played then can tell you any feature outside of raiding received criminal levels of neglect.

It is definitely possible to focus too hard on the most visible minority, because within a month over 80% of of players, that is to say the players that weren't interested in even the easiest version of a raid that has a difficulty of easier than an extreme primal, had absolutely nothing to do. WoD lost nearly a million subscribers a month of a good reason.

Part of it was also dev arrogance over flying issue.