World of Warcraft died because the developers only catered to casuals and world prog

[Loonies]

Guess what, the majority of your playerbase is midcore. Not casual players who have a panic attack when they need to use more than three buttons on their hotbars. Not hardcore players who clear the tier in 16 hours.

Square Enix is on the same trajectory as Blizzard. The sad thing is that the playerbase refuses to see this because of all the blind hype, and this same thing happened in WoW - people couldn't fathom the thought that WoW could be getting worse.

I believe most midcore players will be happy with healers that can do more than two button rotations, for example. People do have brain cells in this game.

FF14 is clearly not catering to the world prog players. So the problem really is the incessant catering of casual players. This will eventually lead to FF14's decline, when you adjust content schedule and delivery to cater to the lowest common denominator, making the traditional midcore crowd dissatisfied and leave. Only reason this is obfuscated is because of all the influx. This game right now is full of new players that have no understanding of the game and have barely participated in the game for more than a tier. And even then I know plenty of WoW players who have quit after literally just one tier because the drought is even worse than in WoW.

People mock WoW's peaks and falls between expansions, but FF14's drops are bigger, sometimes by 50%.

Casual players quit WoW because there is not much content anymore beside M+ and Raid and there are not many players into M+ and Raid. Two content patches in Shadowlands is simply not enough.

As long as we see frequent and good content patches in FF14 everything will be fine.

[Larirawiel]

Guess what, the majority of your playerbase is midcore. Not casual players who have a panic attack when they need to use more than three buttons on their hotbars. Not hardcore players who clear the tier in 16 hours.

Square Enix is on the same trajectory as Blizzard. The sad thing is that the playerbase refuses to see this because of all the blind hype, and this same thing happened in WoW - people couldn't fathom the thought that WoW could be getting worse.

I believe most midcore players will be happy with healers that can do more than two button rotations, for example. People do have brain cells in this game.

FF14 is clearly not catering to the world prog players. So the problem really is the incessant catering of casual players. This will eventually lead to FF14's decline, when you adjust content schedule and delivery to cater to the lowest common denominator, making the traditional midcore crowd dissatisfied and leave. Only reason this is obfuscated is because of all the influx. This game right now is full of new players that have no understanding of the game and have barely participated in the game for more than a tier. And even then I know plenty of WoW players who have quit after literally just one tier because the drought is even worse than in WoW.

People mock WoW's peaks and falls between expansions, but FF14's drops are bigger, sometimes by 50%.

Yes, it is somehow true but only a part of the whole picture. The major goal in WoW is to keep the players subbed. To achieve this goal, they are catering to casuals. But they have also implemented many systems to slow down the players so they cannot progress too fast.

The systems are comparable to Bozja/Zandnor: you need a certain rank to unlock certain things. But in Bozja you have one system. In WoW you have many of them. You farm a weekly capped thing to get your rank or level up to ... unlock another system. Then you farm a different weekly capped thing to get the rank up in the new systen. To unlock another system etc. You have a cascade of different systems. And with every new major patch they add a new one.

Yes, it is easy to farm the weekly capped things. This can be seen as "catering to casuals". But it is getting worse if you do not want to gimp your character. Then you have to study many tutorials and ingame tipps which choices you have to make inside of those systems to get the maximum. This can be very complicated. And a new balance patch can make it obsolete. Those cascades of systems are very hard to balance.

This video explains it very well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQsyY2z8pws


Cheers

[Thoosa]

Remember when 6.0 released and there were often 2-4 hour queues? Now at peak times I get logged on within minutes. Limsa seems noticeably more quiet, as well as my friends list.

I feel like the game at this point focuses on new players and the msq grind and for veteran players there isn’t really much and unless you aim to do ultimate, there’s very little incentive to do your roulette loops (for tomes gear) or savage (since the gear is replaced 6-9 months down the line for new crafted gear which supersedes the raid gear) plus there isn’t enough unique other rewards as a reason to do content.

At least WoW has m+ and world quests which for some reason feel way more interesting to me than fates.

[Hysterior]

Love these threads where you know who the OP is before even clicking...
It's... comforting...

[Curisu]

Remember when 6.0 released and there were often 2-4 hour queues? Now at peak times I get logged on within minutes. Limsa seems noticeably more quiet, as well as my friends list.

I feel like the game at this point focuses on new players and the msq grind and for veteran players there isn’t really much and unless you aim to do ultimate, there’s very little incentive to do your roulette loops (for tomes gear) or savage (since the gear is replaced 6-9 months down the line for new crafted gear which supersedes the raid gear) plus there isn’t enough unique other rewards as a reason to do content.

At least WoW has m+ and world quests which for some reason feel way more interesting to me than fates.

You know that the devs encourage people to just play as much as you want and that it is totally fine to drop the sub between major patches?
And we are at this point right now.
Plus a "new" and working MMO named LostArk.

This is the design philosophy of FFxiv, casual friendly that you can leave for a few month without missing something important. No fear of missing out and a lot of different kind of side content.

If you want to play something grinds with daylie and weekly chores, go play lost ark or WoW.
Or get some grindy SB and ShB relic's.
Get a perfect chocobo for chocobo racing or start collecting Triple triad cards.
You are done with all savage's and ultimates? Have you tried Blue mage?

FFxiv is a theme park MMO with various attractions for all kind of people.
Not like a "six flags" that's mainly known for their rollercoaster.

[Erik501]

The death of WoW does not stem from it catering to "casuals and world prog". The death of WoW stems from Blizzard catering only for money: WoW tokens, GDKP raids, leveling boosts for gold or directly from the cash shop, PVP boosts for gold, mithic+ boosts for gold, you name it... Everything that can be achieved in that game can be straight up bought, if not directly in the cash shop you can use gold, and you can buy that gold in the cash shop in the form of a "WoW token" (which is only a blatant euphemism for pay to win). Not only that: all of it is not only allowed by the TOS, it is even encouraged in subtle ways (a director anouncing in tweeter taht his guild is selling mithic or heroic raid runs, for example), because the more whales wanting to buy boosts the more WoW tokens Blizzard can sell. And since money is the only thing that matters to Blizzard, the quality of the game itself is lower than ever.

There is an immense abyss between Blizzard and SE right now and that will not change unless Naoki Yoshida gives a one eighty turn which I believe is quite unlikely. So, no, you are comparing things which cannot be compared.

[Taliriah]

As a casual player I can say that wow lately has not been catering to me in any way shape or form. Every time I step in a random, non rated battleground and get curb stomped by people with much better gear than me, rendering all my actions during the fight pointless (ie even if you counter every single thing they have properly and unleash your burst at the right time you end up out of cooldowns without having remotely got them close to death, then they just turn around and effortlessly squash you) because I refuse to commit regular and sustained, weekly play time into rated pvp, I can't say I'm feeling that supposed love of casuals.

[Kolsykol]

Did it actually cater to casuals by forcing people to play so much to stay even somewhat relevant?
A game that caters to casuals imo doesn't force people to play every day for hours and have a billion systems.

[Taliriah]

Did it actually cater to casuals by forcing people to play so much to stay even somewhat relevant?
A game that caters to casuals imo doesn't force people to play every day for hours and have a billion systems.

Indeed to me the very definition of being casual is that you play sporadically, whereas modern WoW demands that you commit to a regular playing schedule or to be left behind. Which is puzzling for a subscription based game because you pay the same monthly fee either way, so why not accommodate the way players want to play?

[Juun]

World of Warcraft died because the developers only catered to casuals and world prog

Ahahahahahahahaha.

WoW is made by and made for eSport. The entire game gets balanced and catered for eSports. Teams like Limit and Method are the reason WoW became what it is. The are the only feedback Blizzard follows up on. Raid and Mythic+ invitational is what brings in the viewers. Raid and M+ is what the entire game gets revolved around.

The entire reason WoW, Overwatch and Heartstone went down the drain is because Blizzard does not care about the casual player. While the casual player is the majority of the playerbase. They only care about their view numbers for sponsors during big eSport events. Forgetting they need the casuals to keep their games popular.

Now let me continue laughing at your absurd statement ahahahahah....