dev1031 You are losing your main playerbase by making things too easy/fast/casual

[Kazimir]

FFXI has not died off (not completely at least). And the main reason why it has not died off is that they made it more accessible, both by changing the rules (what we're talking about now) and considerably reducing or removing timesinks (in some cases even too much, leveling is WAY too fast), and commercially (by distributing on Steam at a low price, which is something SE should definitely do with FFXIV as well at the same time with the PS3 launch). In fact the accessibility changes have come *after* the playerbase has started to dip considerably, not before. They are an effect, not a cause.

I won't argue with your assumption that the game is still going because of these points, but it being too hardcore isn't why the game population started to die in the first place. I know this is an individual experience but I knew a lot of people on my server and not one left the game because it was too hardcore. Most MMO's just get boring after playing for 6-7 years. But even that isn't the real reason why it died.

SE was just very poor in putting out new content. About 6 months after ToAU came out is when I started to notice the decline. People left because they were still doing the same things. Sky, Sea, Dynamis, 3 kings. That's it for many years. The new NM's and content that came out from ToAU was mostly worthless in terms of endgame progression. ToAU was out for quite a long time before they finally put anything out of worth. The decline continued after WoTG because of these same reasons. Endgame content was still very slow. Sky, Sea, Dynamis, 3 Kings, were still major parts of the endgame content, nyzul isle and salvage helped but wasn't enough.

Everyone I knew quit because the game simply got boring. It had nothing to do with how hardcore it was, it had nothing to do with timesinks. SE was just very very bad at adding in new endgame content. They were not only slow in adding it, but when they did we got crap like Hydra that dropped almost nothing of worth so no one bothered doing it. Then when new people started to leave, naturally less people were leveling jobs so any new players the game got suffered due to it being built around party play. I think that is mostly why Abyssea somewhat "saved" the game although it also lost a lot of people due to it's casualness.

Anyway, I'm not advocating a time sink filled game. I personally don't have time for it. Just setting the record straight, because I think the assumption that XI failed because of it's time sinks is an incorrect one. Just remember, even WoW has had a lot of time sinks throughout it's popularity and during it's popularity spike. I would argue that the endless rep grinds were even worse than most of XI's time sinks. Not to mention repeatedly doing dungeons you were long since bored of just to get this 1 piece of gear to move onto the next boring tank and spank filled dungeon. They just added to the time sinks with achievements. Do this many quests in this area for this quest achievement! /hug 20 critters for this achievement! Travel to every boring part of the world for this achievement! Do this thing that takes many many wasted hours for a re-skinned mount that does everything all your other mounts do! YEAH FUN!!

At least XI didn't try to sugar coat their time sinks. Or maybe they should have. It's worked so well for other games.

[BruceyBruceyBangBang]

The new NMs I love. I think it is a great idea to have NMs that Mid rank groups can take down and just makes the game that much better for new comers for the future.

However...... dumbing down the already implemented R50 NMs is completely asinine being that they were all easily taken down with 8 players or less WITHOUT the party buffing system. Now, if you feel that they were too powerful based on the strength of the gear made from the materials it drops that's one thing, but you took the only remotely challenging thing to do in the game away without having anything else to back up that desire of content players have. It would have made more sense to dumb them down at a later date when you added new challenging group content. Now we're back to absolutely nothing to do other than grind new classes, grind crafting, or try out new low-mid ranked content.

Learn from this one mistake and try to be mindful of all sides of the player base next time.

[Shiyo]

You mean the first 3 or the new onces that pretty made the game into casual? Because fighting the crystal in the first addon was a pain in the ass the hardest fight i saw in a long time in ffxi.

The ASA/ACP/moogle

[Abriael]

I won't argue with your assumption that the game is still going because of these points, but it being too hardcore isn't why the game population started to die in the first place. I know this is an individual experience but I knew a lot of people on my server and not one left the game because it was too hardcore. Most MMO's just get boring after playing for 6-7 years. But even that isn't the real reason why it died.

Every game gets boring after a while. That's not the problem and it's almost inevitable. The problem is that successful games get new gamers costantly in order to replace the ones that left. That's what stops the population bleeding everywhere.

Final Fantasy XI always had the problem to be very, very unfriendly towards new gamers, and that mean that people left due to boredom and no one replaced them. That's why they removed/drastically reduced the timesinks, to make the experience of upcoming players much smoother and accessible, restoring the influx of new players to replace the old ones that were inevitably lost.
That's why FFXI did *not* die.

[Kazimir]

Every game gets boring after a while. That's not the problem and it's almost inevitable. The problem is that successful games get new gamers costantly in order to replace the ones that left. That's what stops the population bleeding everywhere.

Final Fantasy XI always had the problem to be very, very unfriendly towards new gamers, and that mean that people left due to boredom and no one replaced them. That's why they removed/drastically reduced the timesinks, to make the experience of upcoming players much smoother and accessible, restoring the influx of new players to replace the old ones that were inevitably lost.
That's why FFXI did *not* die.

My point was you keep bringing up time sinks when the time sinks had nothing to do with the losing of players. All games have tons of time sinks even the most popular. The game didn't get or keep as many new players because you were forced to group to level (not an issue in this game) which only became and issue once most of the player base was established into endgame and not as many people were leveling other jobs. This only got worse when people quit due to how boring the game got from lack of new and fun content. Not to mention the poorly handled economy was very bad and inflation also had a lot to do with people not staying in the game.

For those that actually leveled to 75, it was also hard to get established into endgame after so many years of the game being out. People didn't want to recruit new players because their gear was lacking. It was tough for new LS's to become established because of the competition and the fact that gear that was released 5 years earlier was still some of the best.

FFXIV doesn't have to avoid time sinks to become popular. They don't need to avoid the systems Sky used, nor do they need to avoid open world NM's and rare drops (as long as it's done in the way it was when WoTG came out and not how the 3 kings were). Farming is not an issue, death penalty is not an issue, grinding of various sorts is not an issue. Even the most popular MMO's use these systems.

If they put in content that establishes the strong sense of community that XI had by forcing more group play (especially during missions), avoided camping by having NM's spawn at various times in various areas, and added pop systems (Sky, Sea) as well as instanced dungeons and a better system of character progression than XI had, the game will succeed just fine. They've already established a system that allows people to solo level which was the main culprit in XI not gaining new players.

[Abriael]

My point was you keep bringing up time sinks when the time sinks had nothing to do with the losing of players.

The timsinks have a lot to do with not getting new players. Losing players is pretty much inevitable for every game as boredom ensues and new games get released. The only real way to offset it is to get new players in. Nowadays' market simply doesn't support timesinks and new players simply don't chose a game that wastes their playing time when they have many alternatives that don't.

Timesinks = Losing old players/Not getting new players -> Population bleeding
No timesinks = Losing old players/getting new players -> Bleeding amended

Mind you, we already know that FFXIV will *not* go back to FFXI's timesinks. Yoshida and the team know very well than to save this game they need to give people more ways to *have fun* instead of boring them to death by making them spend their playing time waiting.

[Kazimir]

Nowadays' market simply doesn't support timesinks and new players simply don't chose a game that wastes their playing time when they have many alternatives that don't.

Yet every single popular MMO has time sinks. Your argument makes no sense. The only way to avoid time sinks even in this day and age is to simply not play an MMO. They are all filled with time sinks.

The fact that most of them sugar coat it with achievements and rep grinds that give you mediocre gear and mounts doesn't make them any less a time sink.

[TheVedis]

The entire point of every game in existance is to be a time sink
why are you people even arguing about it lol

The question is what kind of time sink do you want not wether or not they should exist

[Abriael]

Yet every single popular MMO has time sinks.

Actually every popular MMO is doing away with timesinks as fast as possible.

The entire point of every game in existance is to be a time sink
why are you people even arguing about it lol

The question is what kind of time sink do you want not wether or not they should exist

"Timesink" = "Time" -> "Sink" = "time thrown in the sink" = Wasted time.

Wasting time is very, very different from spending time.

A well designed MMORPG nowadays will make you "spend" as much time as possible actively having fun (IE: not wasting it).
A badly designed MMORPG will resort to timesink (wasting time), in order to mask lack of content.

[Gicker]

OP. Do you think this game can be a long term success with only it's current player base. SE can't cater to just the old FFXI Hardcores, because having 1k server populations for the duration of this product's life span is not going to keep this game going long term. It's time the hard cores stopped being so selfish, and instead of looking for a game that's purely catered towards them and hostile to casuals, can work together with SE to find some semblance of balance between hard core and casual that can allow this game to be a success long term. More hard cores are leaving every day is what I keep hearing so if ANYTHING they need to focus MORE on the casual non FFXI market than they are.