Square Enix Financial Results Fiscal Year 2025

[brinn12]

I think we've finally reached and acknowledged the extremes people will go to that dev teams faced the simple reality that it is physically impossible to produce enough "content" to keep some people engaged. They can spend 2 years developing a full expansion MSQ with over 60 hours of gameplay, and some people will finish it in a week and then complain there's "nothing to do." Put simply - those people made themselves irrelevant, even when they love to get really vocal. Society has done what it always does - changes - and now the focus isn't on people who want to make MMO's their life, but rather one small part of it complemented by other diversions.

Society has changed? How? Gaming always had both hardcore and casual players, and when a company charges monthly for their servers, people expect content in both quality and quantity because they value their money. You're speaking like it's impossible for SE satisfy both groups. It's not. Most people here ask for a game catering to both, but I doubt this thought ever crossed your mind.

[ElysiumDragon]

Society has changed? How? Gaming always had both hardcore and casual players, and when a company charges monthly for their servers, people expect content in both quality and quantity because they value their money. You're speaking like it's impossible for SE satisfy both groups. It's not. Most people here ask for a game catering to both, but I doubt this thought ever crossed your mind.

People don't hardcore commit their entire lives to a single game anywhere near as much as they did back in the Halcyon days of WoW. That's been the big shift. One solitary game can't meet a demand for infinite and eternally-relevant content, unless the game is built entirely around the concept of 'player-generated content' to begin with.

[Carin-Eri]

That said, the discourse over the idea that Final Fantasy 14 doesn't cater to the hardcore or no-lifer MMO player is odd, because I'm one of the most casual and low-skill people here and yet I've struggled to find things I can do because the game keeps getting harder but I'm not getting better.

I'm in the same boat as you here.

[Nana_Bear]

...That said, the discourse over the idea that Final Fantasy 14 doesn't cater to the hardcore or no-lifer MMO player is odd, because I'm one of the most casual and low-skill people here and yet I've struggled to find things I can do because the game keeps getting harder but I'm not getting better.

Same. Which is why I'm so glad they've continued making a lot of the fights DS/Trust (though I wish we had a second option, to go in as a small party and just fill in empty slots with NPC Scions, for when say hubby and I party up but don't want to fight with random players).

WHY am I glad for DS/Trust expansion?

Because I am not that great at fights. I'm old. And I have a lot of performance anxiety, not wanting to let other people down in the fight. For big dungeons, trials, raids, I have to watch YouTube guides to TRY to get an idea on mechanics, what to do/not do, so I don't screw us up or grossly overtax our healer(s). There's very few fights where I remember ALL that fight's mechanics and do them with ease. And fights where they require us doing a lot of math, etc... ha. I really need to be in a Discord call with family/a friend who knows the fight and can tell me what I need to do, while we're fighting it.

But I *love* the game, *love* the story, and enjoy playing it with family and friends (both RL and friends I've made IN game), attending events, decorating house and character, etc. The game *isn't* just for people who live for Savage/Ultimate/etc. fights, yet some of them forget that, sigh. And yes, there *are* fights I enjoy doing... but for many, being able to just run them with NPCs lets me focus *on* my fighting and not have that performance anxiety chittering away in the background. It's nice.

And when I *have* to get through some new trial/raid that requires a lot of people, in order to progress in MSQ, I may have to wait a while but eventually family who have more friends than I do in game, will pull together a party of them to help me (and husband) get through it. Thankfully.

[brinn12]

People don't hardcore commit their entire lives to a single game anywhere near as much as they did back in the Halcyon days of WoW. That's been the big shift. One solitary game can't meet a demand for infinite and eternally-relevant content, unless the game is built entirely around the concept of 'player-generated content' to begin with.

I disagree. That loss didn't happen because of a shift in society, but because MMOs failed to capture the playerbase that still goes for hardcore hours: the younger generation. They're still out there, and they still play games all day. Of course, they eventually grow up and become working adults. If a company tries to make a game just for its veterans and still fail at that, once they quit, there is nothing left.

While it's hard to produce enough content to cover 12 months a year, current FFXIV is a complete opposite of that. We had to wait 11 months just to get an Operations Field — in Stormblood, we got it after 9 months following the same patch schedule. In Endwalker, we had no battle zone like that and relic steps were concluded instantly, so long as you saved tomes. It's so far from hardcore that even casual players started complaining and unsubbing. Going for extremes is never a good decision.