Ffxiv monthly sub isn't stretching & response to PCGAMER article

[Vyrerus]

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/final-...-stacks-value/

Article is spot on, however, it also seems to lean more on the, "they're sticking with their formula too much!" instead of the why that is the case.


The why being, the suits at Square have never been smart. They wanted to set XIV up to "cruise" like FFXI did, FFXI being their largest earner until MID SHADOWBRINGERS! Yes, that's how long it took XIV to actually out earn FFXI. FFXI bankrolled ARR 2.0.

And FFXI got that way by being a high quality world. Yes, it is old and grindy and clanky and was much maligned by your typical Final Fantasy fan when it came out, but almost everyone that played it got hopelessly addicted to its never ending grind. You literally do not have the time in your limited lifespan to finish FFXI's grind. There are players who started that grind in 2003 and due to all of the additions to the game over the years, they still aren't finished and won't be able to finish for close to another decade. And the thing about that grind is that it revolves around making weapons that fundamentally alter how you can approach the gameplay by giving you leaps and bounds of increased player power and often times new, otherwise inaccessible weaponskills and spells.

And players like that tend to be massive whales as well, buying multiple accounts to increase their grinding speed via bot driven accounts and all that jazz.

Square Enix suits have this weird expectation/delusion that the FFXIV playerbase, which relies on churn to maintain its numbers will hook players like FFXI did, but on a larger scale, and that the players will seemingly play just to play. They don't realize at all, not one iota, that XIV's gameplay loop is the breadth of the universe far and away different from XI's. The only long term grind you have in XIV is achievement points, and nobody sane cares about those (sorry Cider Spider, calls'em how I sees'em <3).

XIV and XI both have gear level plateaus, but XIV's plateau never remains stable for a long enough time that it's anything other than an expansion checkpoint. XI had some span of years where it was similar at its very beginning when it was JP only and then again about 7 years later when they finally broke the 75 cap, until they introduced Item Level in Seekers of Adoulin. But even those times of flux had more stability with how important certain gear pieces were/are due to the different nature about how XI's gear works vs. XIV's.

I could go on for days about ladder progression vs. plateau progression, but my real point is that Square's Suits will never understand gameplay loops nor the mentality of the people who enjoy them. They just want the same result monetarily.

They don't understand and didn't understand when 2.0 rebirthed FFXIV that they were using WoW's formula. WoW's formula requires loads of effort put into the game. Like, sure, Blizzard's made other games since WoW first came on the scene, but you know that WoW has been their flagship. Every other game they've made since takes some sort of queues from WoW and has WoW vibes and sometimes straight up mechanics from WoW.

The short of it is, this formula requires constant investment. Constant building of the ladder. Square Suits don't realize that, so they leave Yoshi-P's team to build the ladder with ever dwindling and breaking tools. Ever dwindling and breaking staff. Ever ordered onto other projects staff.

Before now the narrative was judged by most people (most people are fools) as being good enough to make up for the drawbacks that have spawned from this, but now that the narrative is bad, there is nowhere for them to avert their gaze. They have to stare the problems that have been festering in XIV straight in the face.

It's just a little shitty. It's still good, it's still good!

[ZephyrMenodora]

Most of those points I don't fully agree with or care about personally, aside from the most important one:
[*]content feels like 1 months worth

Offering us the same or less content (I mean, we used to get more dungeons to fill up the expert roulette than we do now) and drawing out the release period is getting harder to tolerate.

I didn't really notice as much during EW since I never levelled any jobs other than WhM and sometimes SMN, so spent a lot of time levelling. But now that I'm mostly caught up on rerunning old content and trying new jobs, I can see why players who have been loyal to XIV for long periods of time are just bored to death at this point.

The good news is 1 month subs exist so you can subscribe for just 1 month then return at next patch. This is what most people seem to have done for many, many years.

Extend the housing grace period to (Content Delay - 1 Month) and maybe you will be on to something. Even then, aiming for your MMO to be a 2 month a year game is not a great business plan for this genre. Even the patch doesn't really give a month of content unless you count artificial gear time gating. Seems like the actual value will soon be what I used to do: Sub 1 month before an expansion to catch up on all the .X patches and 1 month after and then come back 2 years...now 3 years? later for the next cycle of content.

[NegativeS]

I hate throwing around the term 'maintenance mode' for games that obviously aren't in maintenance mode, but DT feels like the prelude to that, at least in terms of gameplay. It seems like we've reached a point of total obfuscation between us and the developers, to the point where it seems none of them actually know how to make a game that appeals to people anymore. Almost like everyone at Square Enix completely vanished one day, and were replaced by aliens who had to learn about what makes FFXIV popular exclusively off of internet discourse."They like glamour, they like story, they like housing, they like... savage raids. That's what we'll give them, nothing more, nothing less."

It really makes me sad, because some of the time I've spent playing this game has been some of the best MMO play I've ever experienced. But there's nothing left to do. Unless you feel like mashing your face against the same three duties over and over, this game's entire endgame experience can be summed up as 'community-driven'. Which is fine for an MMO, but there has to be some kind of direction for this community to follow. Or else everything devolves into people standing in Limsa and arguing over housing. Like it is now.

I'll be honest, the only reason I'm still subscribed is because I forgot that my sub was set to auto-renew, and I still have faith that this game can recover (otherwise I'd chargeback my card and let SE shred my account). But for the foreseeable future, it just doesn't seem like a great use of my time and money.

Neither does WoW at the moment, honestly. Their new expansion is alright, but it feels soulless. And I hate the WoW community.

I desperately need another MMO to try.

[Daralii]

I desperately need another MMO to try.

It's unfortunately a pretty dead genre. GW2 is barely clinging to life despite ArenaNet attempting to kill it at least twice(so that they could move on from the IP), soulless Korean MMOs get churned out frequently but are mostly just cash shop fronts, and then you have the hybrid MMOs like Destiny and Warframe which are mixed bags to say the least.

[NegativeS]

It's unfortunately a pretty dead genre. GW2 is barely clinging to life despite ArenaNet attempting to kill it at least twice(so that they could move on from the IP), soulless Korean MMOs get churned out frequently but are mostly just cash shop fronts, and then you have the hybrid MMOs like Destiny and Warframe which are mixed bags to say the least.

I played GW2 a while ago with friends, way back before the first expansion released. I tried it again earlier this year and I felt completely lost. Tried Destiny, felt like I got the same experience from playing MH:W, which I've already juiced completely dry. And I told myself I'd never play any Korean cash shop MMO.

At this point, I think I'll have to make my own MMO. With blackjack. And tab-targeting.

Actually, you know what, forget the blackjack!

[DiaDeem]

- Content feels like 1 months worth
This is subjective. Not everyone plays 12 hours a day every single day.

- Gear doesn't retain value
Agreed. It particularly hurts to see my Pentameld crafter gear become 100% irrelevant.

- Stale repeatable formula across ALL content
Every game is its own formula repeated all across the length of the game. Bored of the formula? Play something else.

- Dungeons are a predictably laughable conveyor belt
Agreed, and we need to stop encouraging wall-to-wall pulls. ARR's HM dungeons used to challenge players with little tasks across the dungeon. That's all gone by now.

- Msq gameplay is 99% [press X]
Don't really care if the story is good. Would like them to space trails differently though.

- Grand Companies and older content completely abandoned
Agreed. Sad to know we'll never be able to get max rank in them.

- Crafted weapons for SHADOWBRINGERS still not released 4 years after their trial
What????

- Fates are a mindless brain numbing experience
For the love of god, give us music variety. Also, we need more FATE chains like what we had for the Dataqi Chronicles.

- The WOL loosing story significance
Easy fix going forward, hopefully.

[Rithy255]

This is not a big surpise when all the jobs feel the same so the content itself isn't really that replayable. If the game had more unique jobs that gave people a different experience compared to another then doing the new content (such as savage or even normal content) would feel different in ways because of how that job interacts with the content itself. Taking a new Job for that content could be fun and exciting when it really isn't currently (because everything plays the same anyway lol)

Theirs also the fact that the wait times between patches seem to be getting longer and longer... content is more spread out and not always appealing to the core player base (like what happened with island sanctuary).

If you think about it DT's design started at shadowbringers, the only difference is things have gotten more simple from a already pretty simple and friendly game. The content Dungeons, Trials, Ext, savage (so on) can be fun and appealing but what actually compliments that content is the jobs themselves which honestly you can barely tell the difference between Jobs in the same category anymore.

I'm sure theirs a bunch of other issues not just job design at this point, Msq for sure has gone pretty down hill from my perspective so even that's nothing to look forward to.

[Fawkes]

They're on the other end of the spectrum from WoW's content drought. They have content so meticulously patterned and cookie cuttered because they have a strict deadline. There's not much room for trial and error when making content that always has to be done and out the door on a specific date. It's why all healer gear is robes and all tank gear has coat tails, they're just reskinning the same model every time because that's how their workflow is set up and they don't have time for anything else. And you can't really just hire an extra person to solve the problem when everyone else is working like cogs in a machine, you have to make that new cog fit into the existing machine, or turn the machine off and rebuild it.

[OgruMogru]

I really wish I could go thru old content with my max lvl kit.
The diminishing complexity of jobs has been my core issue with the game since ShB. I was personally ok around that time because I only play blm but I definitely saw it affecting friends and people around me and then I began seeing a general change in stranger's attitude and demeanour. Less patient, snitty micro managing, dogmatic - I think it's because the shift to simple synched timer jobs and choreographed fights has brought out the worst in how pedantic nerds cooperate [no offense intended by that - know thyself, friends, I'm including myself here too] It's also made old content so boring and wrote that it holds no value to people so we're forced to only hungrily keep our eyes on the drip feed of new content to feel anything. If new content that's released ends up flopping then you're stranded once again with only the same low lvl synched content you've been running for years.

This also never used to feel so bad because the MSQ was great. Even where it wasn't great it was executed well, contextualised well enough, or at the very least the stitching was neat enough that I could forgive a lot. I'm almost impressed by how quickly all that unravelled for me. I'm upset a misfire like this was able to happen at all as opposed to any specific element within the msq - It's left me very wary of the taste or decision making of the writers going forward. Feels more fundamental than any lore or narrative corrections could touch.

Even when I try to make my own fun -GLAM- I'm roadblocked by repetitive designs, half baked dye channels and the restrictive glamour system :C

[Jeeqbit]

obviously aren't in maintenance mode, but DT feels like the prelude to that

Objectively, I don't think anyone could name content that is different in DT to other expansion launches.

MSQ, 8 dungeons, 3 trials and 2 extremes, 4 normal and savage raids, new custom deliveries, new leves, extra 10 levels for each job, 6 new areas and their FATEs/hunts.

This describes the release content of literally every expansion since Heavensward. So we would have to say that this prelude has been in progress since then.

Almost like everyone at Square Enix completely vanished one day, and were replaced by aliens

A lot of them did get replaced since Stormblood and the older ones became supervisors. Others obviously retired or quit as is natural.

Yoshi-P has also said that many of the people working on it now were once players of the game and joined SE to work on it - the game has been around that long.

who had to learn about what makes FFXIV popular exclusively off of internet discourse.

Tbh all they really can do is figure it out from internet discourse. The player base is really large now, so any previously small fractures are big fractures - like tectonic plate size, so no matter what they do, a lot of people will be unhappy.

To be fair, until recently, even Blizzard seemed to have a lot of trouble "figuring it out from internet discourse" for a long time as well as fighting their own spaghetti code issues. So it seems like deciphering what lots of different people really want is difficult for developers.

Now add on to that the language barrier that we have and it makes it so much harder.

everyone else is working like cogs in a machine, you have to make that new cog fit into the existing machine, or turn the machine off and rebuild it.

Exactly their issue (and quite a common trap for companies to fall into which results in them being slower than independent developers at the same task).