We Need that Feeling back of "CoP"(first release)

[Keyln]

LMFAO but it DOES go above 500k between 2004-2005. Then it stays steady at 500k for nearly 6 years straight.

Whatever, my point still stands. While XI did great in retaining costumers, it was seriously hampered in growth. The game stopped growing after 2005.

FFXI was a great game and did very well. Despite its supposed "Bad parts" which you seem completely against in this new MMO for some reason. If your personal preference is an easier casual MMO that is fine but don't say that we have to carter it your way to be successful.

XI had some serious flaws that prevented it from being better and getting more subscriptions. My entire goal for XIV is to surpass those limits, and see it be more successful than XI ever was, and copying XI to XIV is not the way to do it. Rather, trying to appeal to wider audience, including "casuals", is the way to do it.

[Zaaku]

XI had some serious flaws that prevented it from being better and getting more subscriptions. My entire goal for XIV is to surpass those limits, and see it be more successful than XI ever was, and copying XI to XIV is not the way to do it. Rather, trying to appeal to wider audience, including "casuals", is the way to do it.

Everyone and their grand mama is doing exactly the thing you propose. It is credible how often it does not work. 500k Subscribers for nearly 6 years straight beats the ever living PANTS off most other MMO's during its time and even today. You say they could have trimmed these 'faults' and gotten even more. I say those 'faults' were what made the game popular and long lasting. I enjoyed FFXI not only because of the fantastic story but because of how difficult and dangerous the day to day game play was. Casualization is a growing market I will admit, but there is still a huge market of people who WANT 'balls-in-vice-grip' unforgiving games. The MMO market is most noted for this.

I would not have stuck around FFXI for as long as I did if I could just lolfaceroll over CoP and the other story lines missions. Nor if traversing and exploring the world were without serious risk. The resistance that game offered was wonderous and it gave me something to work against. Which at the end of the day made me want to play more and more. People are already started to get fed up with FFXIV shallow end game and lack luster leveling. It is a rocket blast to cap then a series of .00021% drop rate raids over and over and over and over. I blame this on casualization because they can't fill the inbetween with anything without making life just the tiniest bit uncomfortable for people who just want everything handed to them. It is going to be a massive let down in the long run and is poisoning what could be a fantastic sequel to a fantastic game.

[Exn]

Everyone and their grand mama is doing exactly the thing you propose. It is credible how often it does not work. 500k Subscribers for nearly 6 years straight beats the ever living PANTS off most other MMO's during its time and even today. You say they could have trimmed these 'faults' and gotten even more. I say those 'faults' were what made the game popular and long lasting. I enjoyed FFXI not only because of the fantastic story but because of how difficult and dangerous the day to day game play was. Casualization is a growing market I will admit, but there is still a huge market of people who WANT 'balls-in-vice-grip' unforgiving games. The MMO market is most noted for this.

I would not have stuck around FFXI for as long as I did if I could just lolfaceroll over CoP and the other story lines missions. Nor if traversing and exploring the world were without serious risk. The resistance that game offered was wonderous and it gave me something to work against. Which at the end of the day made me want to play more and more. People are already started to get fed up with FFXIV shallow end game and lack luster leveling. It is a rocket blast to cap then a series of .00021% drop rate raids over and over and over and over. I blame this on casualization because they can't fill the inbetween with anything without making life just the tiniest bit uncomfortable for people who just want everything handed to them. It is going to be a massive let down in the long run and is poisoning what could be a fantastic sequel to a fantastic game.

I fully agree with you. People like to say "well let's wait and see what happens with 2.0.." but given the direction they've been headed these last few patches it doesn't seem like this will shape into a sequel to rival XI. More like SE's attempt at a 'WoW-like' clone, much like the rest of the past generations mmo market. That style seems to appeal to a large number of subs, even if they only stick around a year or two..

[Arcell]

Everyone and their grand mama is doing exactly the thing you propose. It is credible how often it does not work. 500k Subscribers for nearly 6 years straight beats the ever living PANTS off most other MMO's during its time and even today. You say they could have trimmed these 'faults' and gotten even more. I say those 'faults' were what made the game popular and long lasting. I enjoyed FFXI not only because of the fantastic story but because of how difficult and dangerous the day to day game play was. Casualization is a growing market I will admit, but there is still a huge market of people who WANT 'balls-in-vice-grip' unforgiving games. The MMO market is most noted for this.

I would not have stuck around FFXI for as long as I did if I could just lolfaceroll over CoP and the other story lines missions. Nor if traversing and exploring the world were without serious risk. The resistance that game offered was wonderous and it gave me something to work against. Which at the end of the day made me want to play more and more. People are already started to get fed up with FFXIV shallow end game and lack luster leveling. It is a rocket blast to cap then a series of .00021% drop rate raids over and over and over and over. I blame this on casualization because they can't fill the inbetween with anything without making life just the tiniest bit uncomfortable for people who just want everything handed to them. It is going to be a massive let down in the long run and is poisoning what could be a fantastic sequel to a fantastic game.

Well, if you want "Balls in a vice grip" punishing games, go play one. Dead serious, this game isn't catering to that audience so you should cut your losses now. Not saying FFXI is still viable but there are other games with online components that are unforgiving. You're never going to be happy with FFXIV if that's what you're looking for, plain and simple. There may still be a market for games like that but this game is not one of them.

They have stated their intended audience and their approach, I don't think much is going to change the dev's minds considering we're nearing the end of the drastic changes. There's not much left to change and they said they're only changing it once. You can't really blame casuals because a more casual audience has always been the publicly known target audience. You are the one at fault for expecting a game that is admittedly meant for a more casual audience to be just as hardcore as FFXI. Nothing they have ever said or done has reflected that, you can't expect it to be something it's not.

[Jinko]

Yeah! Who wants to do battles where you have to really work together and try hard? Why can't we just make random pick ups with people we don't know AT ALL...and win the first try!? -_- I would rather burn through content within a couple days so I can go stand in town and be bored. Please.

Garuda (hard) is pretty .. uhhh hard

[Zaaku]

Well, if you want "Balls in a vice grip" punishing games, go play one. Dead serious, this game isn't catering to that audience so you should cut your losses now. Not saying FFXI is still viable but there are other games with online components that are unforgiving. You're never going to be happy with FFXIV if that's what you're looking for, plain and simple. There may still be a market for games like that but this game is not one of them.

They have stated their intended audience and their approach, I don't think much is going to change the dev's minds considering we're nearing the end of the drastic changes. There's not much left to change and they said they're only changing it once. You can't really blame casuals because a more casual audience has always been the publicly known target audience. You are the one at fault for expecting a game that is admittedly meant for a more casual audience to be just as hardcore as FFXI. Nothing they have ever said or done has reflected that, you can't expect it to be something it's not.

Considering a healthy portion of the subscribers now are from FFXI and they still have 200k subscribers who could potentially hop ship if they do it right I see no reason why they would not consider it. Once you factor in FFXIV's monumental failure and how they were trying to scoop up the largest audience possible by going broad spectrum. They have have just learned themselves a little lesson. Scared themselves onto a narrower path. Oh sure FFXIV will never be *quite* as hard as FFXI but they could still toughen it up quite a bit. Plus I *would* like to see some new things with the battle mechanics and all the cool things this next generation engine can offer.

Of course if I left who would I be around to bounce Galka tail ideas of off Arc? ^_~

[Keyln]

Everyone and their grand mama is doing exactly the thing you propose. It is credible how often it does not work.

Oh yes, those games that do that are failing, what with their 1 million+ subscribers and whatnot.

500k Subscribers for nearly 6 years straight beats the ever living PANTS off most other MMO's during its time and even today. You say they could have trimmed these 'faults' and gotten even more. I say those 'faults' were what made the game popular and long lasting.

While I'm not saying XI was a failure by any means, there have been more MMO's that have been more successful. Let's not kid ourselves here. XI did do well, and the main reason why is because they copied the biggest MMO at that time (Everquest) and slapped the Final Fantasy label on it.

I enjoyed FFXI not only because of the fantastic story but because of how difficult and dangerous the day to day game play was.

Wait...were you playing the same game I was?

Casualization is a growing market I will admit, but there is still a huge market of people who WANT 'balls-in-vice-grip' unforgiving games. The MMO market is most noted for this.

That's a niche market and will always be a niche market. It's why games like WoW, Aion, and Lineage can have millions of subscribers while other games like XI and Everquest are measured in hundreds of thousands.

I would not have stuck around FFXI for as long as I did if I could just lolfaceroll over CoP and the other story lines missions. Nor if traversing and exploring the world were without serious risk. The resistance that game offered was wonderous and it gave me something to work against. Which at the end of the day made me want to play more and more.

Well, that's your opinion. For me, the difficulty of CoP is something that didn't strike me as very fun, and while I was able to complete the storyline to the end, it's something that I do not want to do ever again.

People are already started to get fed up with FFXIV shallow end game and lack luster leveling. It is a rocket blast to cap then a series of .00021% drop rate raids over and over and over and over.

I dunno, this seems to be a minority view in my opinion.

I blame this on casualization because they can't fill the inbetween with anything without making life just the tiniest bit uncomfortable for people who just want everything handed to them. It is going to be a massive let down in the long run and is poisoning what could be a fantastic sequel to a fantastic game.

You mean making this game more accessible and appeal to a wider variety of people who play games is hurting it? Oh noes! The horrors!

[Irishwars]

Your not remembering the game correctly. FFXI (in the past)had alot of dangerous elements to it. Remember stocking up on invis and sneak potions, or fighting level capped bosses.

[Rokien]

Keyln, people want challenge in there games, just look at demon souls. They didn't think it would be a hit because of the challenge yet, bam game of the year.

The only hardcore mmo out there right now is EVE, which is waaaay over my head and a little late for me to start it up now. As others have said, you don't need 1mil subs to be a success, why not make a game for those few 100k player. Eve has what like 300k or so? They are doing just fine, FFXI did great. You don't need millions of people to make a profit.

If they just turned this into FFXI-2 you would have at least 300k players.

[Isaaru]

half this page is quotes lol

but anyway from glancing at what's being discussed (argued?) above it looks like the main topic is what to want from FFXI around 2005. Well after playing FFXI for 5ish years, I have noticed that the reason I kept playing was because the general concept of how certain endgame structures worked were very appealing despite the obvious flaws.

The main structure of the content was a build-up of sorts. With Sky you would farm NM's to kill God's, then kill God's to kill Kirin. Sea had the same structure and then also brought us limbus which was just a series of dungeons to build up to boss fights. SE needs to add systems in like these because it provided something other than a constant grind and made content get boring at a lot slower rate than spamming one dungeon or primal.

Here's to hoping the Crystal Tower will be something of this sort.