Your looking at it the wrong way.

[Laraul]

You know an MMO is successful when people continue to say things like "Everything SUCKS. I hate my life (and therefore these games that make up most all of it). I want a pony for my next level up."

[Griss]

Be as harsh and brutal as you need to be with feed back, But for the love of bob go about it in a concise and constructive way.

[Zanfire]

Its not that the "game sucks", its that it sucks and in 3 major patches and game changes its only made steps to the left and right and hasn't really advanced.

They were in a pretty serious hole, I don't think anyone really understands the depth of improvement that needs to take place for this game to be commercially viable. To turn 20,000 active users into 2mil is going to require more then a 1/2 assed materia system and some "final fantasy" elements.

MMO's succeed or fail based on their core ideals, not the 1 or 2 things they did right or wrong.

I grantee FFXI would have had close to the same sales even if they adjusted attack speed and had a more pc friendly UI.

Its getting a little nauseating seeing people stress about the end game elements and balances when 90% of this game still makes no sense.

Why is getting Grand company seals more of a chore then leveling from 1-50? Same for making materia. Why is 90% of the materia made still worthless?

I don't get why people are still allowing SE these obscene margins of error...

not only that, but like the OP, admit that its a "shell of a game" yet are completely satisfied with paying for the next 10+ months purely based on promises. No other MMO on the face of the planet would have the balls to do this, they would be shunned for even thinking it and shut down or off to a F2P life....but SE has enough suckers i guess.

And yes i kind of like the game too and enjoy some aspects of it, but its the principle of the matter, your giving them pity and praise when they F*cked up. Like they always say "speak with your wallet"...i sure as hell will.

[Bahn]

The moral of the story:
1. The worst thing SE can do is not listen to their fans.
2. The next worst thing SE can do is listen to their fans.

Well, there's the rub then, eh? The problem here is what types of fans will they listen to? I'm not a hardcore player, I'm not a casual player. I'm pretty middle of the road. Square's in a precarious position with XIV right now since they have to decide which path to take. Make it more exclusive by going the XI route (harder to get exp, less payout on quests, ridiculously low droprates, jobs instead of classes) or go the WoW route (easy to get quests, "rested" exp to allow people who don't have time to catch up, quicker and faster rewards, easy access to content), or do something in the middle.

Right now it does feel like the game is leaning towards the former, but not leaning so much that it's falling into the XI pit. The nature of XI drove me far and away from that game, and although I'm damn sure Yoshida is not looking to make this an "XI-2", the small things he's done to tilt it towards that direction makes me worried.

I'd rather Square just stick to the middle-of-the-road for this, as it really depends on which fanbase to listen to - the guys who play one hour a day just doing a few levequests and some synths (and maybe an occasional open world NM or two) or those who have 64+ person elitist linkshells meant to tackle beastmen strongholds and Primal fights? The game is suffering an identity crisis, but I don't think going to one extreme or the other would be good for this game. It's ultimately up to Square to find the "right" balance between the two, but like I said, there are small warning signs here and there telling me they're ever so slightly leaning towards the XI direction.

Edit: By middle of the road, I mean make it so that BOTH players who only play an hour or two a day and the hardcore grind 5+ hours a day ones and everyone in between can coexist in the game. Not by adding a stupid Fatigue system like they did at launch, of course (which IMO was a foolish move to begin with and hurt PR far more than it should've), but by giving types of content that's doable by different amounts of people (similar to levequests vs faction leves vs primals).

On top of that, give us the option to scale the difficulty of that content to the number of people we have - if an 8-person group wants to do a levequest, they should be allowed to and have a difficulty adjuster to compensate for that (which levequests do). If a 3-person party wants to take on Ifrit, scale down the difficulty so that it's challenging for that 3-person party, but make the drops not as rewarding as having a full party. Stuff like that.

[Majidah]

you're*

/10chars

[Hayden]

Zanfire: I am willing to pay for a shell of a game because I am highly interested in the never before done or even heard about idea of being part of the development stage of an MMO. As I have said before. Also as I've made clear in another thread if the game had been released in Sept 2010 in this state it is today I'd have no problem paying.

Bahn: I couldn't agree more. I remember when ranking from 1-35 was a cake walk, I remember it getting difficult again, and then even more easy! Then hard once more to where it is today, somewhat middle of the road. You'll hear a lot of people complain that its broken and hard to level up, but I think there simply looking at it in relation to the OLD mmo we are no longer taking part in. The MMO under the old dev team we can all agree needed to go.

Now we are left with a game with out much identity. They seem determined to stick to the leve quest system, but have added in Quests and side stories to appease us, we have a broken and useless "guild reward" system, and a fledgling Company system. Some of it feels forced, like they had the ground work from the previous team and felt the need to USE it because it was "promised". Sometimes I feel it'd have been better to scrap the whole thing and start over. But that doesn't seem to be the route they took.

I'm willing to wait till 2.0 because frankly it looks interesting.

But I digress,

The point of this whole thread may have been forgotten. I am not against being harsh and realistic in our feed back and expectations, I only ask that we do so in a mature, educated manner, wile looking at the game with the correct mind set. If you are NOT here to help guide the dev team in the right direction, or because you someday HOPE 2.0 does save the game, then really, why are you here?

[Zanfire]

^ there is a reason its never been done before. Its fact that it really is a beta of a game and they are trying to charge for it, that it already has a very small playerbase that will only shrink because of it. The fact is NO ONE should be paying for this until 2.0. This game has gotten some small attention when they announced they are charging, and pretty much every bit of it being negative....SE just keeps shooting this game in the foot fending off more and more potential players.

[Hayden]

2.0 will come about like it or not Zanfire. If there are 2 players paying or 2000 it will still come about. They have made up their mind. The true judgment will come when the game is released at that time. If there are a few extra souls like myself with enough spare cash to pay who are actually enjoying the game and the progression its going, and who like the idea of having a say in its development and its "extended beta" testing. Again, so be it.

There is no point waging a crusade against those of us who are fine paying for the reasons I stated above.

[LicontAshontear]

^ there is a reason its never been done before. Its fact that it really is a beta of a game and they are trying to charge for it, that it already has a very small playerbase that will only shrink because of it. The fact is NO ONE should be paying for this until 2.0. This game has gotten some small attention when they announced they are charging, and pretty much every bit of it being negative....SE just keeps shooting this game in the foot fending off more and more potential players.

I agree with both sides of this debate to an extent.

Yes SE needs money if they are going to make this game not suck anymore.
Yes SE made this game into the horrible piece of crap that it is.
Yes I am going to pay to play because I know SE will EVENTUALLY make this game good, I played XI and I loved it, I hated the support staff for the game and realized along time ago SE does not care about our opinions because of the way they handled updates in XI.

The only point I've ever tried to make is that SE does not think things through fully when they introduce a new patch. This newest patch was 1 step forward 2 steps back. This patch was designed with the advanced jobs in mind, BUT people are refusing to see how difficult it made alot of things in the mean time. Its breaking a game further just so you can fix it later.

2.0 will come about like it or not Zanfire. If there are 2 players paying or 2000 it will still come about. They have made up their mind. The true judgment will come when the game is released at that time. If there are a few extra souls like myself with enough spare cash to pay who are actually enjoying the game and the progression its going, and who like the idea of having a say in its development and its "extended beta" testing. Again, so be it.

There is no point waging a crusade against those of us who are fine paying for the reasons I stated above.

And yes they have stated that 2.0 is coming even if no one pays for the game now. And not many of us are waging a "crusade" against anyone, most of the time its one or 2 people that post something along the lines of "SE should not have done XYZ" and they get flamed out the ass for it by all the whiteknight fanboys.

I personally think SE was moving in the right direction with 1.19. There were a few things they could have done better, but overall it was a nice patch.

1.20 is just going backwards.

(now lets flame some more cause no one here wants to have a real discussion about anything)

[Zanfire]

2.0 will come about like it or not Zanfire. If there are 2 players paying or 2000 it will still come about. They have made up their mind. The true judgment will come when the game is released at that time. If there are a few extra souls like myself with enough spare cash to pay who are actually enjoying the game and the progression its going, and who like the idea of having a say in its development and its "extended beta" testing. Again, so be it.

There is no point waging a crusade against those of us who are fine paying for the reasons I stated above.

so that begs the question...why charge? It only would make sense to keep it free so everyone keeps playing and keeps up interest. You make them pay, people leave and try other games, or forget about the game. Why risk those potential players sticking around after 2.0? Why charge and get more negative press? I just dont understand what they are thinking.