Thoughts from a casual

[ChiefCurrahee]

XI was made in a time when leveling a character was part of the appeal of a MMORPG. It was also made in a time when people played MMOs to group up with other people.

Times have changed. the only reason to level up is to get to the "end game." The faster the better. The game better be solo friendly because god forbid if there is a delay in my progress. The game would be better if it were B2P or better yet F2P, I want my cake and eat it too.

I think it took me 9 months to almost a year to get my first job in XI to 75 (rdm) I dabbled in other jobs along the way. My 2nd job took about 6 months to level to 75 (drg). Here nearly 2 years into the game I have 2 max level jobs. I didn't have a 3rd max level job until abyssea came out 7 years later. Conversely in XIV i really started the level grind when patch 1.18 hit in late July 2011. I maxed all 7 jobs by Feb 20th 2012. 7 classes in ~6 months.

I remember more about my first year in XI than I remember anything I did in XIV. There were milestones in XI. subjob quest, chocobo license, airship pass to Kazham. Key spells learned. I remember farming for a week to get the money to buy Dispel off the AH, how excited I was to use it in a party. And how impressed the party was with me in crawlers nest when I was on top of dispeling cacoon (early XI days).

It might not be fair comparing it to XIV since it was a broken game. I remember patch days better then actual game moments in XIV. My most stand out day in XIV, when they announced ver 2.0.

I'm hoping 2.0 brings about that same sense of adventure and accomplishment that my early days in XI brought me. But that was a different time in MMO gaming. That was when MMO's weren't mainstream, when games were a smash success when they had a few 100k subs. XI hit a grandslam in early day MMO terms.

Now the mainstream gaming community thinks your MMO is dead in the water if you do anything less than 500k-1 mil subs. To appeal to the mainstream you have to make your game accessable. That means "solo friendly" Solo friendly = fast paced easy solo progression. Which creates a shallow 1-max ramp up. After that people expect an amazing end game to unfold.

XIV:ARR, I don't think will ever have more than 250-500k sustained subs. I hope that SE doesn't forego the journey leveling a character can bring to attract more players. I'd rather play an amazing rememberable game from 1-max than a forgetable path to never ending repeated content

aka. "End game."

[Blackpearlguy]

XI was made in a time when leveling a character was part of the appeal of a MMORPG. It was also made in a time when people played MMOs to group up with other people.

Times have changed. the only reason to level up is to get to the "end game." The faster the better. The game better be solo friendly because god forbid if there is a delay in my progress. The game would be better if it were B2P or better yet F2P, I want my cake and eat it too.

I think it took me 9 months to almost a year to get my first job in XI to 75 (rdm) I dabbled in other jobs along the way. My 2nd job took about 6 months to level to 75 (drg). Here nearly 2 years into the game I have 2 max level jobs. I didn't have a 3rd max level job until abyssea came out 7 years later. Conversely in XIV i really started the level grind when patch 1.18 hit in late July 2011. I maxed all 7 jobs by Feb 20th 2012. 7 classes in ~6 months.

I remember more about my first year in XI than I remember anything I did in XIV. There were milestones in XI. subjob quest, chocobo license, airship pass to Kazham. Key spells learned. I remember farming for a week to get the money to buy Dispel off the AH, how excited I was to use it in a party. And how impressed the party was with me in crawlers nest when I was on top of dispeling cacoon (early XI days).

It might not be fair comparing it to XIV since it was a broken game. I remember patch days better then actual game moments in XIV. My most stand out day in XIV, when they announced ver 2.0.

I'm hoping 2.0 brings about that same sense of adventure and accomplishment that my early days in XI brought me. But that was a different time in MMO gaming. That was when MMO's weren't mainstream, when games were a smash success when they had a few 100k subs. XI hit a grandslam in early day MMO terms.

Now the gaming mainstream gaming community thinks your MMO is dead in the water if you do anything less than 500k-1 mil subs. To appeal to the mainstream you have to make your game accessable. That means "solo friendly" Solo friendly = fast paced easy solo progression. Which creates a shallow 1-max ramp up. After that people expect an amazing end game to unfold.

XIV:ARR, I don't think will ever have more than 250-500k sustained subs. I hope that SE doesn't forego the journey leveling a character can bring to attract more players. I'd rather play an amazing rememberable game from 1-max than a forgetable path to never ending repeated content

aka. "End game."

Couple really good points here that i'll use to dispel the "old mmo" model being broken. You played a game for 2 years that was really difficult, although very fun because of all the accomplishments. Managed to get two of your favourite jobs (not every single job) to the top level where you could participate in various end game events that were repetitive, for around 7 years if i'm reading correct. So you spent 9 years playing a game that forced grouping- i'm just saying that this model sounds like a lot more fun from what you've described than the alternative "mainstream" model. All i'm saying is that to appeal to a massive demographic the new way clearly isn't working either, just ask all the F2P; SWtoR, GW2 etc.

However I do 100% agree with the milestone portion of what you were saying. The first year in FFXI was awesome, so many great memories. The question that should be asked is there a way to recapture some of that same magic while still moving forward?

[Exn]

Good stuff

You make some great points. ARR doesn't need 10M subs, so I wonder why SE would create this potentially "watered down" MMO when you already had a subscriber base big enuff to support a long run for this game without ripping its balls off? I guess 250K+ long term (2+years) subs isn't as good as 1M+ short term (2-6months) subs, but MMOs today have a habit of failing, and this game can't survive another disappointment.

SE's saving grace is going to be the ps3 version, as it can pretty much go uncontested as the new mainstream MMO for the console so I bet alot of ppl will pick it up. If your new to the MMO genre (which alot of PS3 users will be), I couldn't imagine they'd find anything majorly wrong or disappointing about it, so alot of them may begin to feel about ARR the way we felt about XI or other mmos. But for the rest of us who've been around the block a few times, it may not be able to live up to the expectation.

[Solace]

You make some great points. ARR doesn't need 10M subs, so I wonder why SE would create this potentially "watered down" MMO when you already had a subscriber base big enuff to support a long run for this game without ripping its balls off? I guess 250K+ long term (2+years) subs isn't as good as 1M+ short term (2-6months) subs, but MMOs today have a habit of failing, and this game can't survive another disappointment.

SE's saving grace is going to be the ps3 version, as it can pretty much go uncontested as the new mainstream MMO for the console so I bet alot of ppl will pick it up. If your new to the MMO genre (which alot of PS3 users will be), I couldn't imagine they'd find anything majorly wrong or disappointing about it, so alot of them may begin to feel about ARR the way we felt about XI or other mmos. But for the rest of us who've been around the block a few times, it may not be able to live up to the expectation.

A saving grace that will cause ARR to not be as great as it could be? I don't consider the ps3 a saving grace at all.
I consider it a burden.
So many limitations we have to deal with now because they want to make a ps3 release.

[Exn]

A saving grace that will cause ARR to not be as great as it could be? I don't consider the ps3 a saving grace at all.
I consider it a burden.
So many limitations we have to deal with now because they want to make a ps3 release.

Well I meant saving grace for SE, in terms of dollars in their pockets (sales).

[VitoScaletta]

A saving grace that will cause ARR to not be as great as it could be? I don't consider the ps3 a saving grace at all.
I consider it a burden.
So many limitations we have to deal with now because they want to make a ps3 release.

Fact is they've been beating the console vs pc horse since '03. Yoshida promised Sony it would happen, it's happening, let's move passed that.