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

[Larirawiel]

Dont know what you want me to say here? SE doesnt care about its players and blows their money instead of futureproofing FFXIV? Yes. Ive been saying that for ages.

I guess, they do care. But it seems to me, that the SQEX management is too disconnected from the real world. The ivory tower is way too high.




Cheers

[Voidmage]

I guess, they do care. But it seems to me, that the SQEX management is too disconnected from the real world. The ivory tower is way too high.




Cheers

I also genuinely think the devs themself still care. The fight design, overall visuals or music are still good.
I just think they get completely creatively cut off from Yoshida upwards.
Template development they are railroaded in for example.
I still remember them implementing flying in ARR zones or some Viera headgear behind Yoshidas back in their freetime.

At this point I personally think even the devs aren’t exactly happy but Japanese culture and so on.
What we see is the end result of over templating and over managing development and the Japanese work culture mixed with Square Enix usual incompetence.

[Gurgeh]

...Questioning where our monthly fee and cash shop money goes is absolutely valid at this point, because it's painfully clear its being funneled into the companies multiple failed projects year after year after year instead of back into the game...

This!
The total lack of commercial awareness and negotiating nouse of so many of these games companies is staggering. What especially annoys me is the amount risk games companies take on for rights to these stupid film franchises.
Making a good game is hard enough as it is without being limited by a non-purpose built lore/canon.
Making a good game is hard enough without having to content with an irrational fanatical fanbase that will review bomb you if you attempt perturb any one of the 1,000 disunited perspectives they all have.
Making a good game is hard enough as it is without having to make a game that has had the resourced needed to make it both brilliantly playable, and also to come up to the AAAAAAAAASSSSSS productions standards they IP owners imagine befits one of their block buster releases.
Yes Marvel and Starwars games I'm looking at you.
Making games is Incredibly hard.
Incredibly complex.
Incredibly risky.
Incredibly fickle.
If they had any sense these Games companies should be.
- "First of all you the IP owner are not going to see a cent except through royalties from 'profit' only. Just like an indy devs having to deal with investment companies: your not going to see a dime until after we do. THERE IS VALUE FOR YOU IN JUST HOW OUR GAME COULD ADVERTISE AND RAISE THE PROFILE OF YOUR FRANCHISE IP"
- "Secondly, we will consult with you but you are not going to have a say except in the story and what we do with your characters which you will sign off early on. Scripts are needed for films, and its on us to give you a script before we start making the game"
- "Either you trust us to do your IP justice, or you don't. If you don't you don't have to agree"
- "But we are not taking all the risk and pandering to your sense of entitlement around your IP and all the other disadvantages, and sinking our games chances with your production demands"
- "YOUR FRANCHISE IP JUST AINT WORTH ALL THAT MUCH AFTER FACTORING RISK. Now do you want in on the publicity and relevance your franchise will get if we pull this off?..."

[Arzalis]

Louder for the people in the back.

It's 100% predatory behavior from SE that housing has a 45 day demolition timer. It's incredibly inconvenient to have to time your sub/unsub to (at best) get (maybe?) 6 months of the year without having to pay to maintain a house? That's approximately $80 minimum being exploited from players to maintain an artificially created limited resource which, depending on the server, they may never be able to have again.

Questioning where our monthly fee and cash shop money goes is absolutely valid at this point, because it's painfully clear its being funneled into the companies multiple failed projects year after year after year instead of back into the game.

I unsubbed because I am tired of watching our game turn to absolute garbage knowing my money will never go towards making the game better.

A lot of the game is like this, and I don't know why people aren't more annoyed.

Us lacking a proper glamour system is literally intentional. Why fix something when they can sell a worse solution (retainers) to a problem they created instead? 200 hours of MSQ holding you back from playing with your friends? No worries, just buy this level skip from us; ignore that we keep making the MSQ longer and longer with no entry point, even in our "start of a new story" expansion. You miss a timed event and are interested in the gear rewards that were free? Give us money and please ignore the fact we reran these items on a vendor for free the first two years.

The game is incredibly scummy with some things. Housing is the most prevalent, but it's the tip of the iceberg.

Most of the longstanding problems with this game make sense when you realize SE financially benefits from them.

[Raven2014]

But lets not pretend that the budget for improving that game comes from anything but abusing people with gambling addictions.
Mechanically gacha games are more predatory monetarily. If you cant admit to that. Youre a whale, simple as.

Funny, point out to me where I deny any of that? I'm not the one pretending anything, you are. The difference between you and me is that I don't pretend to have a moral superior complex or play into the victim mentality. When I see someone max out their credit card and go into bankruptcy ... I look at them and I see losers, not victim. I'm tired of people like you who can't get of their high horse and believe someone society have to protect people from their own idiocy by playing up false narrative. In another word, people like you want the "norm" to suffer for the shake of a few "exceptional moron".

- Look at Las Vegas: sure once a while you read some gamblers addict go into bankruptcy there ... but people like you gonna use those occasional examples and claim the entire city is ran on gambling addiction which is paternally false. It's a place for tourism, people goes there for fund, even family vacations. Yeah a lot gonna sit at the table, some gonna play the slot machine, most gonna lose money ... but that's fine, because most people "treat" them as an entertainment, not an addiction.

- Samething with alcohol. Tell me, will you make a claim that the whole industry sustained by alcoholic only? I will find it's hard to believe. I know about 30-40 people who drinks, and only one of them is an alcoholic. So who do you think sustain the industry, the "responsible drinker" or the one who drink themselves into stupor? I always see a bunch of people around the liquor sections whenever I go to Cosco, are they all alcoholic?


I don't see the Gacha games as any difference as those. I had engaged their community instead of looking from the outside with prejudice. I took out a spreadsheet and work out the numbers instead of yelling in ignorance, that's why I can say you're wrong on all account. Is there whale in Gacha games? Of course there are, but there is a saying among gacha players: you can get everything for free, paying make it easier, and whale if you want to compete with the top 5%. What does that imply where the majority of the players base are? And are you claiming Gacha games actually only sustain by the top 5% of its players?

Again, why not see for yourself. You can go try them for a few months and if after that your opinion doesn't change, that will be fine, but at the very least at that point you would be no longer talking from ignorance. Once you take a look at the pricing structure of most gacha game, you will see that their main target is still the MMO's crown with ~15$ a month on average. See it for yourself, educate yourself, making conclusion base on fact rather than heresay and prejudice, I don't see a downside to that, do you?

[kajv95]

This gacha conversation is nothing short of amusing when you remember that Square Enix probably funded the development of their own gachas using us FFXIV players.

[VerdeLuck]

Gachas are just the new MMOs, most have a f2p track and then a paid track where you buy 10-20 dollars worth of items a month via a monthly pass, and get enough resources you can have basically 1 copy of every character. That's just an evolution of the MMO subscription model.
pay 20 dollars a month to play a game via subscription or pay 20 dollars a month to play a game via a pass that gives you in-game currency, it's the same either way.

the only difference is whales are allowed to drop 2,000 dollars if they want to skip all grinds and get to the endgame instantly. If you're not a whale you don't do that.

[Aco505]

I guess, they do care. But it seems to me, that the SQEX management is too disconnected from the real world. The ivory tower is way too high.

Yoshi-P is part of management himself. He's on the board of directors. They have no excuse anymore.


The game needs more funding, resources and staff.

There's nothing else to say. It can't be that it takes so long to implement things that should've been part of the game already. For instance, the graphical update feels unfinished on the characters: plenty of low resolution spots on the faces, many older haircuts still look bad compared to the two newest ones, and the bodies were barely updated.

Things like having a glamor log as well as unlocking glamor, cross DC PF (and ideally DF), an increase of the buff cap or fixing the issues with weaving when having high ping should already be part of the game. They're also painfully slow when it comes to balancing jobs: it mostly happens during a major patch or a minor patch introducing Savage or Ultimate. That's an extremely small number of points per expansion.

[Daralii]

Yoshi-P is part of management himself. He's on the board of directors. They have no excuse anymore.


The game needs more funding, resources and staff.

There's nothing else to say. It can't be that it takes so long to implement things that should've been part of the game already. For instance, the graphical update feels unfinished on the characters: plenty of low resolution spots on the faces, many older haircuts still look bad compared to the two newest ones, and the bodies were barely updated.

Things like having a glamor log as well as unlocking glamor, cross DC PF (and ideally DF), an increase of the buff cap or fixing the issues with weaving when having high ping should already be part of the game. They're also painfully slow when it comes to balancing jobs: it mostly happens during a major patch or a minor patch introducing Savage or Ultimate. That's an extremely small number of points per expansion.

If people keep paying, and will pay extra for workarounds to problems(IE retainers for glamour space), they have no incentive to do anything but keep slowly churning out the bare minimum.

[VeyaAkemi]

the only difference is whales are allowed to drop 2,000 dollars if they want to skip all grinds and get to the endgame instantly. If you're not a whale you don't do that.

Oh, you think *getting* the character is the end of the grind? no, no, you are critically misunderstanding how gachas work, first you need to get the character you want, then you need to spend the next 40 hours, split between weeks to months due to energy systems, doing the most braindead grind imaginable, stuff that makes Shared FATE grind seem exciting and thrilling, to get enough materials to level them up and rank up all their skills, then you need to spend... at minimum 80 hours, but depending how hard you want to go for it effectively limitless, hours grinding gear for that character, until you eventually settle for something that's like maybe 70% of the way to ideal, then you go online, be it reddit, Twitter, whatever, and see someone posting the absolute most pristine piece of gear imaginable with the title "First time doing domains, is this any good?".

Realistically, the bulk of gacha currency grind happens almost passively while doing all that other stuff, they get you with *everything else* by intentionally making all the necessary aspects of engaging with the gameplay miserable.