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

[Zaaku]

Lux I never played SAM!

To many of those bastards running around murdering everything they glance at. As for "living in the past". Opinion.

The players from 6 years didn't magically evolve into casual loving gaming due to Unicorn blood in the water supply. Just a new generation has grown up and is ready to start spending their parents money and sacrificing precious opportunities for teenage sexual encounters. There still exist an entire generation before them who enjoy more difficult content and while these new players may be a good addition to a subscription base, that doesn't mean everyone has to just stop drop and rolled everything out exclusively for their tastes. Since FFXI was a well known facilitator of "GODAMMIT THIS SHIT IS HARD!" during its era it is most likely that we could see that kind of flavor injected into FFXIV. At least more likely then so other random dev studio gearing for the older players.


As for the go big or go home. This would be nothing short of a Feel good PG-13 football movie for FFXIV to blast back past 500k Hell that many people didn't even buy when it was first released and didn't have the stigma of lol4.0 attached. FFXIV will never ever ever EVER big a huge contender. It can still be profitable though, and if they stop trying to please everyone under the sun and focus on what makes the game FUN in the long run they will enjoy steady income for years to come.

[Sephrick]

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 don't doubt for a second that there were players who enjoyed certain aspects of XI that others consider flawed.

But there's a factor in that 500,000 that needs to be considered -- brand loyalty.

Peaking as the eighth most subscribers at that time certainly isn't anything to scoff at. But I'm curious, and I know we'll never know, how many of those 500,000 stuck it out because the game was called Final Fantasy.

Would they ever have gotten close to those numbers without Square's flagship monicker on the box? Especially back when it was a PS2 only title that cost a $99 USD investment (game and hard drive) before ever even logging on.

I think this is a good disclaimer for any "official data" regarding MMO subscriptions:

Cooking the Stats

It is worth pointing out that there is no way to obtain irrefutable accurate information on subscribers. Only the companies responsible for the games have access to the statistics and their interpretation of an active account may be different from yours. The majority count anyone who is paying for a subscription, anyone in a free trial period or anyone who has been active on an account within the last month. They make no distinction for users with multiple accounts so they will be counted separately. Clearly the figures will not be representative of the number of users you can expect to find online within a game world at any given time – that number will be much lower.

Found here

Also, I know citing Wiki is generally taboo, but this comes specifically cited from Edge magazine in 2006 on the FFXI page:

As of 2006, between 200,000 and 300,000 active players logged in per day, and the game was the dominant MMORPG in Japan.[4]

So I think it's important to take that 500,000 with a grain of salt, as it comes from the yearly Vana'diel census and in no way can be relied upon as representative of sustained and active subscriptions.

It's merely an approximation of accounts that had been active at some point in that year.

It's also worth noting that XI was plagued with RMT. So much so that they were able to wreck the game's economy twice. But those RMT also count toward the subscriptions.

But to the point of the OP: like most of XI, CoP was an acquired taste. It was ruined for many not by it's design, but by its community. XI's subscriber base, however large, was a very dedicated group of people.

Many players would blow through content as quickly as possible to be able to return to their regular end game schedule. Meaning players who fell behind or were new to the game were stuck.

CoP was great when it was fresh and the games limited player base was going at it willingly, but it failed the test of time. Many players finished battles vowing "never again."

The story still remains one of the best SE has crafted. But the "magic" of CoP cannot be reproduced, as it was something different for everyone.

tl;dr: There's no doubt XI was a financial success. There's also no doubt that those sustained subscribers found something wonderful in their own experience. However, to use numbers produced by a company to promote their product to try and justify a very specific aspect of a service that has been running for 10 years now is flawed. Some people enjoyed level caps, some dealt with it in the promise of something else they might enjoy.

And all of that is irrelevant to XIV as the developers need to let the game stand on its own legs without making it "like XI" or "not like "XI." They now better than anyone what worked and what didn't.

[Keres]

You say that yet we all know there are big changes coming in 2.0

You have no idea what it may turn into. Given their finacial gain on FFXI standard and the just embarrassing flop of FFXIV's release they may tune back in with what they know and what they already have a stable player base vested in.

I'll leave aside whether or not such changes would be a good thing or a bad thing. But if you are seriously trying to delude yourself into thinking that 2.0 will magically revert FFXIV back into a FFXI-style orgy of 12-hour grind parties and HNM camping, you should go back and re-read many of Yoshi's old producer letters. His vision for the game as a "theme park"-style MMO that caters to both casual and serious players (including time-restricted solo players from both camps) is very clear, and the game's new direction was decided after he came onto the team, well after the game's original design was known to be a failure. Whether Yoshi's vision for the game is your thing or not is a matter of personal opinion, but trying to advocate that the game should radically change course this late into the redesign process is unfortunately not a realistic proposition. By all means, suggest specific individual things that the devs should implement that you would like to see, but "make it all really hard and make everything just like FFXI" isn't a useful suggestion, nor one that's likely to ever be done at this point.

[Keyln]

tl;dr: There's no doubt XI was a financial success. There's also no doubt that those sustained subscribers found something wonderful in their own experience. However, to use numbers produced by a company to promote their product to try and justify a very specific aspect of a service that has been running for 10 years now is flawed. Some people enjoyed level caps, some dealt with it in the promise of something else they might enjoy.

And all of that is irrelevant to XIV as the developers need to let the game stand on its own legs without making it "like XI" or "not like "XI." They now better than anyone what worked and what didn't.

QFT! I completely agree with what you said here.

[Roj]

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.

Arbitary statistics you just made up mean nothing. Besides those would be the same people who are already paying SE subs for an online game so where is the business sense in that!?
No, SE is a business not a charity for people such as yourself, you loose. Game over.

[Zyph]

Yes, there are some things this game could use from XI that would make this game better. Yes there are things that this game is doing good already and could be expanded on to make better. Yes there are good ideas that no one's even thought of yet that could be revolutionary. Honestly sometimes I think the devs listen to us too much, and all the pandering is going to turn this game into mushy goop instead of a cake.

But back on topic of the thread. I do think there should be unlockable endgame areas that require at least SOME challenge to access. That feeling when I first stepped into Tu'Lia or Al'taieu after all the challenge it took to get there (besides the fact that the zones themselves looked breathtaking) was really memorable and satisfying. Getting to Sea was probably my favorite accomplishment in my video gaming history.

Maybe the quest series to get these unlockable zones could be Grand Company related (and therefore group based/optional), with final endgame zones similar to Sky and Sea. The rewards for getting to these endgame zones would be similar to Sky and Sea, with hard NMs, master level dungeons, and loot that reflects the difficulty. But unlike XI, there wouldn't be hours of camping, horrendous drop rates for farming, or one-pop-one-chance NMs.

It would not be for everyone, it would not need to be for everyone.

I dunno, just a thought.

[Preypacer]

I don't doubt for a second that there were players who enjoyed certain aspects of XI that others consider flawed.

But there's a factor in that 500,000 that needs to be considered -- brand loyalty.

Peaking as the eighth most subscribers at that time certainly isn't anything to scoff at. But I'm curious, and I know we'll never know, how many of those 500,000 stuck it out because the game was called Final Fantasy.

Would they ever have gotten close to those numbers without Square's flagship monicker on the box? Especially back when it was a PS2 only title that cost a $99 USD investment (game and hard drive) before ever even logging on.

Considering the tragic history, the famously failed launch and embarassingly horrible reception of the very MMO whose forums you've posted this on, I wonder if you see the irony in the "brand loyalty" argument you're making here.

Did the Final Fantasy brand make a difference to most people after XIV's launch? Hell no it didn't. They left in droves.

If it were any other developer who wasn't self-funded and/or dedicated to turning the mess around as SE is, XIV would have been canceled outright and we wouldn't be here discussing it now. They'd have cut their losses. Brand loyalty or being a FF title meant very little for this game. While brand loyalty certainly plays a role to a degree, you are grossly overstating its importance.

People will not play or support a game they don't enjoy enough to do so. They certainly won't play it continuously for years. Many certainly continued to play it for years in XI, even as more "casual friendly" MMOs were launching around it, and maintaining lesser populations despite being more "mainstream".

I think this is a good disclaimer for any "official data" regarding MMO subscriptions:

Found here

Also, I know citing Wiki is generally taboo, but this comes specifically cited from Edge magazine in 2006 on the FFXI page:

So I think it's important to take that 500,000 with a grain of salt, as it comes from the yearly Vana'diel census and in no way can be relied upon as representative of sustained and active subscriptions.

It's merely an approximation of accounts that had been active at some point in that year.

Problem with this bit. For one, FFXI reported ~500,000 players for several years in a row. Whether it's taken "at a certain point in the year", when it's that consistent year after year, it kinda indicates a trend.

Further, the Vana'diel Census was not purely a "marketing piece". It went far beyond providing population numbers. It provided detailed breakdowns of population by race, job, character style (hair, height, etc), home nation, and so on and so forth. It was several pages of all kinds of data provided for the players' consideration. It was more for the fans than for the public.I don't think I ever saw the Census mentioned on a general MMO news site. I always found out about it by going to the official site, or on a FFXI-specific fan site. That's not to say it wasn't mentioned on other sites. It just wasn't a high-importance, high-profile news piece.

Citing its overall population was just one piece of a much, much larger collection of data. I hardly think what race people played the most would be of much marketing value to them or the game.

It's also worth noting that XI was plagued with RMT. So much so that they were able to wreck the game's economy twice. But those RMT also count toward the subscriptions.

Ah yes, the "there were bots" argument. Not an uncommon claim used to dismiss or downplay a game's success. It's also a very weak one.

Why?

Because all MMOs with anything resembling a population, have bots. In fact, they're consistently far more present in some MMOs than what XI had even at its worst. The point is, if you're going to consider "bots" into the equation for XI's population, you have to do so for every other MMO you're comparing it to as well. Otherwise your argument is one-sided and more than a little dishonest.

To that end, FFXI still managed to maintain a higher paying and playing population (bot or otherwise) than many other MMOs out there. It did this despite its age and despite all the "issues" people have commonly associated with it. FFXI continued to break every "rule" of what "conventional wisdom" dictates a MMO "must have" and "must do" in order to be successful in a post-WoW market. Regardless, it continued to hold strong for several years on.

That didn't happen because of its bot population. That happened because FFXI was providing a MMO experience that was quite unlike most anything else you could find on the market, and that appealed to a very specific set of gamers who enjoyed and appreciated the game for what it was. It's not so simple as to reduce it down to "well it was very EQ-like". So what? So was WoW at launch in many fundamental ways, and I don't think you'd say FFXI was anything like WoW.

But to the point of the OP: like most of XI, CoP was an acquired taste. It was ruined for many not by it's design, but by its community. XI's subscriber base, however large, was a very dedicated group of people.

No argument there. There were a lot of self-centered a-holes in XI who would gladly accept all the help they were given, but would never help anyone else in return. I had the "pleasure" of helping and then later being snubbed by a number of them.

tl;dr: There's no doubt XI was a financial success. There's also no doubt that those sustained subscribers found something wonderful in their own experience. However, to use numbers produced by a company to promote their product to try and justify a very specific aspect of a service that has been running for 10 years now is flawed. Some people enjoyed level caps, some dealt with it in the promise of something else they might enjoy.

And all of that is irrelevant to XIV as the developers need to let the game stand on its own legs without making it "like XI" or "not like "XI." They now better than anyone what worked and what didn't.

I find this funny considering how they've changed XI so drastically in order to appeal to more players, and yet the population has continued to drop over time. At one time they knew what worked and what didn't for their core player base - the very people who stuck with them for several years. And they were rewarded with a healthy and consistent playerbase of around half a million players. Somewhere along the line, they lost sight of that, forgot who their core player-base was, and decided to dip into a bigger, much shallower and far more fickle and flighty pool known as "casual gamers". Not surprisingly, it didn't really improved their situation overall.

[Sephrick]

Considering the tragic history, the famously failed launch and embarassingly horrible reception of the very MMO whose forums you've posted this on, I wonder if you see the irony in the "brand loyalty" argument you're making here.

Irony? There are servers full with players who have played since launch, now? About 10,000-20,000 people who have been paying since January now.

But there's a difference between cumbersome (XI) and broken (XIV circa 2010).

People will not play or support a game they don't enjoy enough to do so. They certainly won't play it continuously for years. Many certainly continued to play it for years in XI, even as more "casual friendly" MMOs were launching around it, and maintaining lesser populations despite being more "mainstream".

You missed my point entirely. I never said "no one enjoyed XI."

Here's the simplest way I can say it: Saying "XI reportedly had 500,000 subscribers therefore XIV should copy X" is flawed logic.

To this point, something as broad as the "magic" of Chains of Promathia. Whether the game had 500 or 500,000 subscribers, there's no way to reproduce the feeling something gave a unique individual.

Some people loved the grind. Some people didn't care about CoP at all and did it long enough to unlock Sea.

So trying to reproduce CoP would be far more prohibitive to XIV than moving forward and letting XIV be its own thing.

Problem with this bit. For one, FFXI reported ~500,000 players for several years in a row. Whether it's taken "at a certain point in the year", when it's that consistent year after year, it kinda indicates a trend.

Further, the Vana'diel Census was not purely a "marketing piece". It went far beyond providing population numbers. It provided detailed breakdowns of population by race, job, character style (hair, height, etc), home nation, and so on and so forth. It was several pages of all kinds of data provided for the players' consideration. It was more for the fans than for the public.I don't think I ever saw the Census mentioned on a general MMO news site. I always found out about it by going to the official site, or on a FFXI-specific fan site. That's not to say it wasn't mentioned on other sites. It just wasn't a high-importance, high-profile news piece.

Citing its overall population was just one piece of a much, much larger collection of data. I hardly think what race people played the most would be of much marketing value to them or the game.

That has nothing to do with the number everyone focuses on. Yeah, the census broke things down into all sorts of percentages. But they all still were percentages of the initial number of 500,000.

The initial number was meant to be promotional. A talking point each year.

Ah yes, the "there were bots" argument. Not an uncommon claim used to dismiss or downplay a game's success. It's also a very weak one.

Hardly. They were paid subscriptions and therefore counted in the census.

But again, you're missing my point. I'm not trying to say XI didn't have players who enjoyed the game. Just that the "500,000" isn't entirely accurate. It includes trials, unsustained users and RMT accounts and legit players with multiple accounts. A reported 500,000 doesn't automatically mean "500,000 unique players."

I find this funny considering how they've changed XI so drastically in order to appeal to more players, and yet the population has continued to drop over time. At one time they knew what worked and what didn't for their core player base - the very people who stuck with them for several years. And they were rewarded with a healthy and consistent playerbase of around half a million players. Somewhere along the line, they lost sight of that, forgot who their core player-base was, and decided to dip into a bigger, much shallower and far more fickle pool known as "casual gamers". Not surprisingly, it didn't really improved their situation overall.

There's a lot more that factors into XI's decline than the changes they made.

A service's subscribers can be sustained for only so long. The drop off was natural. Six years for an MMO is phenomenal.

But when was the last time XI was advertised? Or even promoted with interviews?

Even Blizzard advertises the hell out of the almighty WoW to this day. Because it's simple business, don't lose your subscription base to attrition. Create a market penetration that at least continually replaces leaving subscribers with new members.

Sustaining 500,000 was an impressive feat, but it was also a sign of a big problem -- they couldn't retain subscribers long enough to grow beyond that. Thus signifying a hemorrhaging of subscribers.

It's easy to point at XI and say "it's dying because it's casual friendly" but it has a lot more to do with age than content.

And again, it all comes back to the thread's topic. Some people left XI because they played it for six years and it was just time. Some didn't want to level beyond 75. Some didn't like Abyssea.

But these broad stroke statements need to stop. Especially when they're incredibly misconstrued.

[Lux_Rayna]

Lux I never played SAM!

To many of those bastards running around murdering everything they glance at. As for "living in the past". Opinion.

Lol funny.

The players from 6 years didn't magically evolve into casual loving gaming due to Unicorn blood in the water supply. Just a new generation has grown up and is ready to start spending their parents money and sacrificing precious opportunities for teenage sexual encounters. There still exist an entire generation before them who enjoy more difficult content and while these new players may be a good addition to a subscription base, that doesn't mean everyone has to just stop drop and rolled everything out exclusively for their tastes.

The target demographic for a genre is a certain age. Once you grow out of that age, they are no longer gearing the game towards you. It was great when you were in that demographic, but once you grow out of it thats it. They aren't looking for you anymore, they're looking for those kids. That means games have to cater to the tastes kids that age have. Its 2012, kids don't like the same shit you liked as a kid. That much should be *obvious*. If you listen to music, watch tv, look at cartoons, you'll see *way* different shit than you saw as a kid. I look at cartoon network now and shake my head. Shit changes, thats life. Are they gonna pump out cartoons I loved as a kid? No. Because I am not a kid anymore. I'm out of the target demographic. So my tastes are, effectively, "the past" as far as they are concerned. They got a new generation to deal with that has radically different tastes.

Point is you grew out of the target demographic, so what you like is "history" as far as game designers, music producers, artists, etc are concerned. The only thing you can do suck it up, or stick with things that are designed for your age group. If you're 30 and playing shit rated T, you have no right to complain about how its "not what it used to be". Of course its not, you're playing shit designed for a kid who grew up in the 90s, not the 80s. Think man!

[Raymeo]

Just a new generation has grown up and is ready to start spending their parents money and sacrificing precious opportunities for teenage sexual encounters. There still exist an entire generation before them who enjoy more difficult content and while these new players may be a good addition to a subscription base, that doesn't mean everyone has to just stop drop and rolled everything out exclusively for their tastes.

What makes you think that they're doing it exclusively for the new generation's tastes? It's like you said yourself, immediately before that...

The players from 6 years didn't magically evolve into casual loving gaming due to Unicorn blood in the water supply.

See, you think you're being sarcastic, but you're absolutely right. Without any unicorn blood involved, I actually grew up and acquired responsibilities over the past eight years, and I doubt that I'm the only one. (Yes, eight years, not six. CoP was 2004, but I understand. We oldies want to feel younger now, right?) So while you may think that our generation is still hardcore, you're really only able to speak for yourself. Believe it or not, there are people in our generation who don't cry in their pancakes whenever casual content gets added to their games, and instead find themselves appreciating the fact that there's something new for them to do between meetings or during playdates.

And don't get me wrong, I loved CoP and still want FFXIV to make me feel like that game did when I played it. You can see my lengthy post earlier in this thread for my analysis if you'd like. So how can I be an advocate for more casual content and the feeling of CoP at the same time, you may ask? Easily, because I don't think you understand what "casual" means. It doesn't mean being terribad at playing. That's what "noob" means. "Casual" simply means having less time to play every day.

With that vocabulary out of the way, you can see that casual gamers can still be just as skilled as hardcore players, with the only difference being that they have less time to kill. Since time does not equal difficulty, (challenge is what equals difficulty,) there's no reason why we can't have something of the same caliber as CoP in difficulty, storytelling, and exploration while still allowing the casual gamers to participate. All it takes is keeping the things that I just listed (engaging difficulty, storytelling, and exploration), while simply cutting out CoP's time sinks like farming Mistmelts all night, waiting on two hour abilities between wipes, and grinding easy prey mobs for two weeks just to pop an NM. Poof, everybody's happy because (a) the skilled casuals finally have enough time to complete a mission or NM pop when they log in and (b) the hardcore players find that their level of challenge is preserved, and they're still able to keep ahead of the casuals in progression by having the time to advance in missions more frequently and pop NMs more times.