Is SE's Marketing / PR department -severely- hurting the games chances of success?

[Azurymber]

To start with, let me point out that i have no understanding of how the departments at SE work. I am hoping that there are marketing and PR (public relations) experts involved in the decisions about how the game evolves. If not, then this is probably one of the main reasons the game has done so poorly.

Any MMO needs to meet a certain set of minimum standards in order to compete with other MMOs. Further, there are certain actions that should be taken in order to make the game -seem- good (even if it is not).

Here is a list of -some- areas in which SE has utterly failed.

-When the game first came out, they sabotaged its reputation with the poor communication about the surplus system alienating huge numbers of potential players.

-Many 'ideas' have been mentioned and then completely disappeared (ex. hamlet battles, active ecosystems)

-A number of serious issues like deleting people from linkshells or NMs not re-spawning have been completely ignored, even though many players have posted concerns about them

-There has been no info on what will happen with the bots. Which creates the impression that until people pay for the game SE doesn't care if you cheat. And also creates an impression that cheaters will end up with millions of gil and be far ahead of those who played fair.

-Many updates have been translated incorrectly or have said different things in different languages creating confusion and negative speculation. For example i believe that SE had said a list of updates would be complete by summer and then had to point out it was by the -end- of summer. Grammar issues like that annoy and confuse players and make it seem like the company doesn't care enough about the game to spend the money on a proper translator or editor.

-Many updates seem to have been "filler" and created a lot of optimism that ended in disappointment (ex. the end of the world coming of the archon stuff)

-Many updates have come months ahead of the actual implementation, which creates the impression that SE is just writing out BS on lodestone to appease people without actually coming up with substance. Ex. companies have had their info up for over a month but there hasn't really been any serious implementation. A good PR position here would be to release the info a week and a half before a patch to hype the patch up. then include content in the patch to get players back into the game. And repeat. Hyping things up months ahead of the content is a horrendous strategy because it results in disappointed people each patch and more people quitting.

-Patches are released with almost no desired updates. this should -never- happen. The little fixes should always be included within a patch that has things people want. When you release a patch (like 1.17b) all you are doing is fueling negative thoughts about the game. I would say this forum proves that point -very- well.

-Games run on game currency and game economies. Right now FFXIV's economy is a mess. However, i don't believe it has ever even been addressed as an issue. Any intelligent person will realize the severe problems that come with inflation (as many players have created posts about). And it should also be logical to realize that having a gil sink is dangerous if you have 1000s of people who quit the game with 20mil+ on their character who can flood the servers when an expansion comes and cause hyperinflation. This confuses some people so let me put in in FFXI terms. At one point in FFXI it was around 300mil for a P-charm. After banning a large number of RMT and bots, SE reduced the amount of gil in the game and p-charm and many other items dropped to an average 1/10th of their cost at peak inflation. So now you have a 30mil p-charm. Now imagine if when the p-charm was 300mil, a number of players who had 100mil+ quit the game. And then WOTG or an expansion comes out and 80% of those people come back to the game with the now HUGE amounts of gil. Inflation once again occurs, driving up prices of the p-charm maybe to 100mil this time. And those people who had been playing for weeks saving up the 30mil are now essentially screwed.

-No communication about PS3 is a serious issue. While its understandable that they won't know until the game is "better", the longer it is put off the more outdated FFXIV becomes. Right now FFXIV has horrible ratings on most sites and is considered to be a failure or a joke to many ff fans and on many MMO websites. Nothing has been done to counter this.

-The downloading system for patches still doesn't work properly or well, even if you open up ports. Now i realize this is something that many games experience, but it quickly turns new players away from the game, and nothing has been done to fix it or improve on it. I don't believe it has even been discussed as a problem

-In game systems (like sidequests) have been rushed through and make the game seem cheap to new players. Think of it this way. Most people who are going to come to FFXIV now have prob played an MMO before (otherwise they prob wouldn't choose their first MMO to be one with such horrid ratings). That being said, they may be used to wow quest which you can level up and get good rewards from, or ffxi quests which had cutscenes and intricate dramatic stories. Then they play this game, where a quest has you essentially talk to someone, run for 40 min, talk to someone else or kill 5 mobs that don't give good sp, run back for 40 min, talk to someone again, and get a reward worth what you could have farmed in 5 minutes.

-there are a bunch of half-completed and incorrect databases. A good PR department would make sure there is at least one -good- database. Even free MMOs have good databases. The FFXIV community is nothing compared to what FFXI had, and SE should be putting resources into making it into what FFXI was.

- Tutorials are disorganized, wrong, and hard to reach. I have had about 5 friends recently start the game, and all have quit within a few days. Why? Because the tutorials suck, and because the game comes off as a grind -right from the start-

-Grid and Limsa cities are dead making the game look empty to new players. Who wants to play an MMO when they only see like 3-4 people at all times in their starting city? Even free to play MMOs that -suck- have more than that. SE should be finding ways to spread the population out, but instead all their efforts seem to make players go to ul'dah

There are many more of these. But the simple point is that SE has failed in almost all aspects other than their original website, to make this game appealing or impressive to new and current players.

With this track record, do you really think they will be able to pull off a re-launch? Especially when the game is old AND has some of the worst MMO reviews out there?

There are a lot of small simple ways to make this game seem better, build a better community, and make players and potential players more optimistic. However, the current team seems to be ignoring all these opportunities. Fixing the game will only fix it for those currently playing. To truly save the game SE will need to step up and make people want to play.

[Joeking]

What PR and marketing department are you talking about?

[Leeloo]

Main website still says Pugilist gets the Steal ability = (

[Azurymber]

What PR and marketing department are you talking about?

Whatever department or whichever employees are tasked with ensuring that FFXIV both pleases its players and attracts new players. I'm not sure if one exists and if it doesn't and Yoshi-P (who i doubt is a pro at it) is making the decisions, then we know why this game has such a poor reputation and prob shouldn't be too optimistic.

[Moldy]

Very well said

[Joeking]

Whatever department or whichever employees are tasked with ensuring that FFXIV both pleases its players and attracts new players. I'm not sure if one exists and if it doesn't and Yoshi-P (who i doubt is a pro at it) is making the decisions, then we know why this game has such a poor reputation and prob shouldn't be too optimistic.

That comment was a Joe-Oak.

Its probably Tanaka's job, considering when FFXIII came out the first time I saw the commercial was on the Discovery Channel... Its all about the vision!.

[Peregrine]

I agree on all fronts. This is a story about a developer who isn't performing up to standard, and their main solution is still to distract and stall instead of primarily just perform. They're not even good at distracting and stalling. This patch should have never happened.

It was a judgment error and reminds everyone how impotent the game is. We don't need reminded that round 3 of targetting system fiddling is all this game has going on right now. We get it.

[Randis]

I am not sure the marketing department already got the momo about this title.
Or maybe they did and now just ignore it and hope it will go away.

[Shai]

For example i believe that SE had said a list of updates would be complete by summer and then had to point out it was by the -end- of summer.

Basic reading comprehension and not jumping to speculative whimsical conclusions also helps on this one.

[Peregrine]

Basic reading comprehension and not jumping to speculative whimsical conclusions also helps on this one.

It wasn't speculative conclusions and poor comprehension. That's what the English plainly stated, in bold. Twice.
If you read it any other way, YOU read it incorrectly and it is your comprehension that needs work.

"This is what we have planned up until summer 2011" Means up until summer. Not through summer. Sorry. If you don't have simple English mastered, don't claim you do.

The correct statement is "This is what we have planned up until Fall 2011."

Period. But that just sounds kindof pathetic, so they tried to get away with more fake wording and got burned.

"This is what we have planned up until Summer 2011" defines and epitomizes what is wrong with Square Enix. They're trying to stretch too little performance into too sunny a picture. We can tell they're just stalling, word-playing, and trying to distract people if not outright trick them.

That strategy gets old fast. It got old about December.