FFXIV has lost it's magic

[Tupsi]

This is my first pay to play game I am paying on my own and when my mom bought Aion years ago, it was different and fun.

Yeah, sadly as much as people love to mock it, XI really was one of the few P2P MMOs that was hugely successful and tried something different even if it was inspired by EQ, it at least felt like SE put love and attention into making it and to this date they're making updates in a timely manner and even splitting larger updates in 1 month intervals. It's a shame that it's so old school that they won't be able to properly revive it, but MMOs like XIV is the future and P2P for it is a risk when it's designed as a F2P MMO.

People say XI had a huge RMT problem, but in all reality if you compile data from 2005-2010 you'll realize the actual problem were players (not RMT) botting, because there was even a saying, basically coined by BG themselves: "Everyone else bots so I may as well and we openly support it" and so on. So yeah, RMT didn't have a hold on XI as much as people say here. Now with XIV? This is what you call having a hold on an MMO the mere fact people are getting hacked even while online is already worse than many other MMOs out there including SE's other MMOs (this is their 4th..)

The fact people said in XI "Windower makes it playable" kind of proves that RMT or not, the biggest problem ended up being players, since the "playability" was using things like Fill Mode, Wireframes, seeing internal and masked data (for a reason) something most players normally wouldn't need to see in an MMO. For all of its flaws, XI felt like an MMO, ARR feels more like a single player game trying to emulate an MMO which even then PSO/PSO2 did it better in many regards.

[Reslin]

People say XI had a huge RMT problem, but in all reality if you compile data from 2005-2010 you'll realize the actual problem were players (not RMT) botting, because there was even a saying, basically coined by BG themselves: "Everyone else bots so I may as well and we openly support it" and so on. So yeah, RMT didn't have a hold on XI as much as people say here. Now with XIV? This is what you call having a hold on an MMO the mere fact people are getting hacked even while online is already worse than many other MMOs out there including SE's other MMOs (this is their 4th..)

Not much RMT in FF11? They didn't have a hold on it? I must be imagining linkshell drama over who is working with RMT, who is 'cybering' rmt for gear, what linkshells support it, what linkshells don't, etc etc. It was obviously big enough that people even took this rage to several different popular forums and ended up in screaming matches with each other. Not to mention look at the abysmal economy and how much everything cost. It wasn't just from players botting. If you want to pretend that RMT barely existed in FF11 by all means do so but I've had messaging advertisements, I've seen spam, and I've seen them in action. What was unique back then in comparison today is that botting technology wasn't as good so many of them opted to work with various LS groups in order to claim certain monsters.

[Datu]

Nowadays it feels like convenience is achieved at the expense of making the MMO feel like an immersive virtual world. Killers and Achievers often remain happy in these environments, but Socializers and especially Explorers get less and less of what they would enjoy.

Agreed. Agreed. Agreed. I also agree with Gramul\\\\\\'s posts.

I want that immersive, deep, expansive wilderness experience. I don\\\\\\'t want claustrophobic, packed and cluttered zones.

I want time to enjoy what is happening around me. I don\\\\\\'t want things to go by in a flash.

I want a juicy stake. I\\\\\\'m sick of fast food.

[Hyrist]

It's hard to take weight on the game that's called "headed down the drain" when we're still growing in numbers, however.

When there is hard evidence of this game actually on the decline instead of on the rise, then we can acknowledge claims that this game is 'going down the drain'. Right now? They're breaking zones with population concentrations and surges, and lagging their instanced servers.

It's very hard to make that call as anything but a wild speculation. And who know's how the behavior of the subscription base will be as we settle into content patches.

We call for changes, and there will be changes. Will that be enough to keep ARR stable and on the rise? That's yet to be seen either way. I personally don't enjoy the harsh language in jumping to conclusions either way in this. But it's been acknowledged that we're still way above projected subscription rates they were anticipating, so much that they revised their income for the company Quarter.

That's not an indication of failure. How long it will hold, however, remains a question. But we're already more well off than both 1.0 and FFXI for measured time-frame. This cannot be disputed.

Ultimately, the measure of success is decided upon by the company, and whether or not they decide to stay the course of payment model. We're a good year or so away before we can call it.

[Tupsi]

That's not an indication of failure. How long it will hold, however, remains a question. But we're already more well off than both 1.0 and FFXI for measured time-frame. This cannot be disputed.

TERA and SWTOR both broke records genre rise and even had their own spin on the MMORPG that we haven't seen before in a lot of areas which people later tried to immitate and we all know how those two MMOs ended up.

Nothing is disputed, just people thinking the ones who feel the game is boring or anything other than "amazing!" get told they're wrong, as if it's only white - People always say the in-game and forum communities are different, well in-game you'll notice the exceedingly longer Queue times for lower level dungeons and the fact almost no one does cape west wind in Queue or Castrum Merdium/Praetorium which even has long queue times for a Tank and/or Healer - If our numbers are on the rise, queues should be much quicker because it'll have a larger, fresher pool of players to pull from, no?

Once the honeymoon phase ends with ARR, we'll definitely see how it holds up and if they speed things up after 2.1.

[Hyrist]

TERA and SWTOR both broke records genre rise and even had their own spin on the MMORPG that we haven't seen before in a lot of areas which people later tried to immitate and we all know how those two MMOs ended up.

This argument has been addressed many times before, and addressed by Yoshida-san himself.


TERA and SWTOR are products made off of investor money, and therefore beholden to return on that investment, typically in the short term as investors tend to be the panicky sort.

Square Enix is running this show internally. Its their money paying for it and the only people they have to answer to are shareholders, it is a blow they can take(and have taken) internally. They don't incur much in the way of debts to be paid by outsiders, but in loss of profits overall. And again, even the initial profits made caused them to swing several million dollars - meaning the development loss they took to redesign the game (they were heavily in the red this quarter before the reassessment) turned into a profit immediately. The initial investment cost of 2.0 is already bought and paid for, where as other MMOs begin in the hole.

The only other company that could take this sort of risk internally was Activison-Blizzard. No other MMO company has that sort of safety net.

As a point of personal speculation, I do not believe this game will dip below its intended success margin. By all indications it has in fact tripped it before even taping China, the world's largest Online Playerbase, and a large chunk of WoW's subscription numbers even still now.

Even after the Honeymoon, all indications point that we have a gigantic safety margin, and that's giving absolutely no faith to December's update. I think at this point, it is safe to say that Square Enix has the playerbase's attention. In spite of all its faults, players are, ultimately, wanting more. More takes time, and not all will be patient enough to see it come - but even among those it is likely many will come back even as we gather more attention.

[Akiza]

These threads are utterly pointless because developers made several MMo's that people seem to have everything that the complainers want like Dark Falls, The Secret World , War Hammer Online and Dark Ages of Camelot and they all failed. So now all modern mmo's use the WoW formula because that's what makes money. The only way to change the MMO genre is to support new types of MMo's not complain about them on forums because developer respond to our money not our discussions.

Also I think if eventually if people stop supporting MMO's developers will stop making them all together and the genre will die along with the PC gaming community

[AjoraOak]

Rather sure FFXIV is just coasting on that brief period with no new mmos coming out yet, there are serious threats to it including itself and just about every WoW player I know has gone back (expansion is still looming off in the distance). If that's any indication, the 2.1 patch will only exacerbate the problems with FFXIV as they are currently, endgame takes you less than an hour or so a week etc., etc.. Now you can coat it with numbers and say it has a huge amount of players, but I think the numbers are dwindling quickly even without any new competition present.

[Starlord]

endgame takes you less than an hour or so a week etc., etc..

There is more endgame then what you are thinking of, ( Coil= 3 hours or so a week). That's not all there is to endgame. So when level cap is raised to say 60, the level 50 raids aren't endgame anymore?

After 2.1:

1) Garuda/Titan/Ifrit ( Hard and Extreme Mode) ( 6 Different fights, 2 Modes)
2) 2 HM Dungeons
3) Pharos Sirius
4) Relic
5) Wanderer's Palace
6) AK
7) Crystal Tower
8) Coil
9) Moggle (Primal)

There is plenty to do, just some people want to rush to the top and claim there is no endgame content, other than the last fraction of endgame there is ( Coil). Say what you will, they are endgame. You just feel differently about them, like some others.

Edit: Also, this is a MMO Launch, as such there probably won't be a lot of endgame content till later in it's life.

[Arriverderci]

Noel is awesome!

1. Is boring. Reusing Primal's in another level..Only defeat Ifrit so many times. .__.;
2. Sounds cool.
3. Cool.
4. Relic. Most people should of gotten by now.
5&6. Merge those. They are the same and peoples are bored of it.
7. Step back as others say, but I'ma enjoy this since I have no interests in gearing alot for coil.
8. Ok.
9. Moogle is cute! 1+

Edit: Oh...It's Starbaby. >>...Hmph.