PL Woes

[Sfarzoso]

Player 4: So where are we going?
Player 5: Help I got agg
Player 6: I like cheesecake.

Player 5 levels down!

[Xoo]

That reminds me of my favorite FFXI quote: White Mage; "Wait, did you guys pull already? Where are you?"

Reminds me of the most classic moment I'll never forget:

Dunes party, around Lv15. Puller went out for a sheep and apparently missed with his ranged, and just as he was returning the WHM had put up Protectra. The WHM's HP went from 100% to 0 in one Critical. Funniest thing I ever saw.

[Davorok]

Player 5 levels down!

Don't get me wrong. I am not advocating a return to XI's punishing, obtuse, 2 hour walk-of-death quests.

Just tie-in Ability/Spell Unlocks to the already easy Class Quests but structure the quests so that we are utilizing the new Ability/Spell in order to "learn" it.

As for Limit Breaks/Genkai, just solo an NM or Class NPC to "Prove yourself" is all I am asking. (Not as hard as Maat though).

[Peptaru]

Maat wasn't hard! The RDM was a dick, but he wasn't that bad with preparation. Yayaya I know "q.q i had to fight him 30 times, the hell he isn't hard!" He wasn't. lol.

[Davorok]

Maat wasn't hard! The RDM was a dick, but he wasn't that bad with preparation. Yayaya I know "q.q i had to fight him 30 times, the hell he isn't hard!" He wasn't. lol.

It was the execution of said preparation that doomed me. Have you ever seen a Galka do the Taru /panic dance?

[indira]

they need a level limit quest that test you as a player, to be able to level the next 5 levels.

[Lux_Rayna]

I have a question, how well are all the WoW clones doing?.... They must be stealing all of WoW's subscribers right? Copying WoW must be the secret to success..... HINT: It isn't. I do agree with the timing of WoW being the cause for its popularity, but the "casuals" who fell in love with WoW and its mechanics are still playing it. They are not dumping their millions of subs into games like XIV, The few that do leave WoW to come over here, or to other easy-play games, are drops in the bucket and end up going back to it anyway.

I dont disagree but...

Games that try to emulate WoW are going to fail just as hard as games that target the niche crowd. The main problem lies in the fact that while trying to cater to casuals, and failing to steal enough subs from the giant, you're going to alienate the people who want the other style of game. Bad business? Failing to steal customers while alienating your franchise die-hards. I can't think of a worse business model.

Quite frankly this is not what investors believe. And investors keep SE's business running. We can argue game logic all day long but all the investor cares about is how SE is going to make as much money as possible. The only possible answer SE can have, that will satisfy an investor, is "We are going to take control of the casual market". That is it. No other options. The timing isn't right to start going against the grain. We are in a period right now where its all about the casual market. Investors don't give two craps about logic, only what they saw work. Has the niche system generated millions of subscribers? Never. Has the casual system? WoW's did.

Now as an investor what are you gonna do? Invest in some company thats gonna take some "radical new approach" that won't target the market? Or are you gonna look for games that take a similar approach to WoW, but have the potential to do it better? Its a no-brainer lol.

Niche system: 0
WoW system: 1

In terms of probability, an investor will go for the WoW system every time. Its been proven. The niche system has yet to prove itself as a cash cow. Of course as you pointed out, beating WoW is *not* easy. But businesses run in this cycle all the time. You get a leading competitor, bunch of copycats that fail trying to beat the competitor, then all of a sudden a company rises up with somethin brand new and pwns everyone.

Apple did it to Microsoft
WoW did it to Everquest
Microsoft did it to Sony (with the Xbox)
Nintendo did it Microsoft AND Sony (Wii says hi)
insert more examples here

All in all you can't blame SE for doing what their investors want. At the end o the day, for any business, you do what makes your investors happy. Investors want success like WoW, so thats what you have to try to give them.

[Zaaku]

This doesn't sit right with me though Lux. If this is investor orientated why is it still active? Any other game that failed as hard as FFXIV did would have its funding cut and labeled a loss. Yet here wer are nearly a year later after months up months of free trial.

It seems to me that SE cannot let a flagship title go down so hard which is why they are pumping money into a dead horse. In this case wouldn't going back to basic to recoup their previous fans satisfy the reviewers so FF can keep its luster and still be obtainable? I understand investors are likely balding old men who think computers are communist machines and wonder why the secretary hasn't fetched them another drink yet but it stands to reason.

If FFXI had X number of subscribers for Y years. They tried something different with FFXIV and it failed horribly. Wouldn't they shelter under the comfort and safety of a previous success?

[Lux_Rayna]

This doesn't sit right with me though Lux. If this is investor orientated why is it still active? Any other game that failed as hard as FFXIV did would have its funding cut and labeled a loss. Yet here wer are nearly a year later after months up months of free trial.

It seems to me that SE cannot let a flagship title go down so hard which is why they are pumping money into a dead horse. In this case wouldn't going back to basic to recoup their previous fans satisfy the reviewers so FF can keep its luster and still be obtainable? I understand investors are likely balding old men who think computers are communist machines and wonder why the secretary hasn't fetched them another drink yet but it stands to reason.

If FFXI had X number of subscribers for Y years. They tried something different with FFXIV and it failed horribly. Wouldn't they shelter under the comfort and safety of a previous success?

Well investors invest in a company, not a game. Games are supposed to improve a company's revenue, so an investor may be lured to either

1) hold his shares
2) buy more shares

based on the projected success of that game, and how much of SE's total revenue that game will generate. In the case of FFXIV, I highly doubt it was ever projected to account for more than a measly few percent of SE's revenue. I'm not shareholder though, so I honestly have no idea what the projections were. I'm only guessing based on the fact that SE has a LOOOOT of products, and were planning to keep pushing new products. So who knows. Point being, its likely not a pivotal point of company success.

Still, success is success and failure is failure to an investor. It is very likely that SE lost quite a few shareholders/shares when FFXIV flopped as hard as it did. I don't keep up with the stock market in Japan, but im willing to bet it was an ugly quarter for SE. The game is still running because apparently Yoshida thinks, rather believes, that FFXIV can be a massive success. For whatever reason, he's convinced that it is the definitive title of the next generation of mmo's. Needless to say, he has investors to convince. When you promise something, and it flops, you can't let it burn in flames when you suckered in a bunch of investors. There's a certain obligation to fulfill that promise, or you lose investor confidence, even potential investor confidence. If that happens your company starts going weeee south.

So really this game is afloat for two reasons: Yoshida thinks its the hottest thing since sliced bread, and SE has to prove that FFXIV is really what they said it was, and that its failure was due to a poor employee. This is also why Tanaka got fired: SE had to prove to its investors that it wasn't the fault of the project, but of some schmuck that sabotaged it. If SE let the game die, they would be admitting that they were wrong about their project and they wasted investors' money on something that wasn't what they said it would be. Not a place you wanna be in lol.

[Kiroh]

They tried something different with FFXIV and it failed horribly. Wouldn't they shelter under the comfort and safety of a previous success?

1.) The "previous success" is still a live, running project.

2.) Comfort and safety are no different to a game developer than stagnation and death.