Do players still have a voice in the direction of development for FFXIV?

[Gilthas]

I believe that a lot of FF fans left the game because of it's focus. This game is targeted at the general MMO population.

Not talking about FFXI fans only, but FF fans in general. I saw a lot of excitement towards this game from the offline FF population. I'm certain that there were a lot more of them than WoW players.

[Codek]

Final fantasy XIV ARR was released August 27, 2013 (24th for early birds). Fact.

WoW had roughly 10 mil subs during last years beginning. Well known fact.

Wow has been dropping exponentially since then. Also fact. http://www.maximumpc.com/world_warcr...n_players_2013

Considering many people look for an mmo after leaving another one (which is common knowledge and practice) it is safe to assume they saw arr, decided to come to this game and walla! The subs we had at launch.

Current game, considering the drop in people logging in (different for each guild), forum complaining, and how much more silent it is (less spam) at certain hubs, Its safe to assume through logic there's some fall in the subscription base. Personally I'd love to see SE release sub numbers just for the curious. But i doubt they would.

Mostly fact and some easy observation and a little bit of common sense (aka no rose colored glasses).

I can further increase you basis of a conjecture by including the support that players were also leaving other games such as GW2 and SWTOR (both of which stole a decent amount of players from WoW) and that further helped the re-launch of this game.

What your describing is the typical observation of the flow of content locust that plagues MMO's these days. The issue I have with your conjecture is that this flow of players is not in fact FACT. There is no way to prove the number of players coming and leaving this game simply based of other games success (and losses). It's still a conjecture all the same.

[Amberion]

Not talking about FFXI fans only, but FF fans in general. I saw a lot of excitement towards this game from the offline FF population. I'm certain that there were a lot more of them than WoW players.

I was also talking about general FF fans. Unfortunately, Yoshida decided to target everyone, instead of just the FF fans.

As for WoW players vs FF fans. I would say maybe 40% vs 60% +-10%.... Or close to it.

[Gilthas]

Unfortunately, Yoshida decided to target everyone, instead of just the FF fans.

Not sure why you're saying unfortunately here. What did he do? Make the game mechanics closer to WoW than FFXI? Not really sure that's a bad thing. I'm more inclined to believe that this game having mechanics closer to those of FFXI would have driven off players a lot faster, as in, they wouldn't even have bought the game after playing the beta.

[ArcheustheWise]

*Snip* It's still a conjecture all the same.

Hmm fair enough. Perhaps I put "truthful" In there a bit hastily. Either way, neither of us can prove one way or another eh? As neither of us have that solid fact. I would say though. I would really like to see their current sub numbers. Curiosity and all.

[Codek]

Hmm fair enough. Perhaps I put "truthful" In there a bit hastily. Either way, neither of us can prove one way or another eh?

I'm still wondering on that one. I remember the community on SWTOR had a website that would refresh the status of all the servers (Full/Heavy/Med/Light/Very Light). Since they already knew the min-max number of players each status indicated, they calculated a rough estimate of the current active player base on a 6 hour interval. It gave a good idea of how the population was moving through the months/years.

Anything like that would be interesting (yet dangerous) to have here as well.

[ArcheustheWise]

I'm still wondering on that one. I remember the community on SWTOR had a website that would refresh the status of all the servers (Full/Heavy/Med/Light). Since they already knew the min-max number of players each status indicated, they calculated a rough estimate of the current active player base on a 6 hour interval. It gave a good idea of how the population was moving through the months/years.

Anything like that would be interesting (yet dangerous) to have here as well.

Well sooner or later (probably soon) square is going to have to release something to the public (mainly the investors) to show where its at. So i don't think we will have to wait too long for that. Even so, it would be nice to be able to figure that out by the method you stated above. I don't think the servers have a high or low marker do they? :/

[Xairos]

We, as mmo genre lovers, need to face the fact that WoW has forever changed the landscape of brand new mmos. This means things will seem easy. This means there will always be a Duty Finder function (in fact players clamored for this before the game ever came out because the consumers of this genre now place DF as a must-have in any new mmo). This means that we will either have a tight set of abilities (like Gw2) or a ton of somewhat useless ones for everyday usage (like Rift). The pivotal era in mmos were back during the reign of variety. Back when you could have voted with your dollars to support different games like FFXI and Ultima and EQ en masse, we got our friends to join us in Azeroth. We can no longer relish in the days of a wide variety because at any future games beta, we will beg for features like DF and mounts and raids and the like. We did this to ourselves.

[Amberion]

snip

And again I will say that I did not mention FFXI, just FF fans in general. FF fans have never liked it when one of the games was to linear. And they have never been a theme park lobby server.

And if you have noticed how the general MMO gamers are, you would know that they come and try the game, then they just move on/back to another game.

If you will have any chance at making those general MMO'ers stay, you will need a near flawless game. And this game isn't it.

However, if they had targeted FF fans that has been loyal for 20+ years. They would have gotten a more stable and long term consumer base. Instead I believe that subscriptions will vary a lot from month to month.

[ArcheustheWise]

We, as mmo genre lovers, need to face the fact that WoW has forever changed the landscape of brand new mmos. .

*Shrugs* Personally im more of the mindset that history will repeat itself, even in the mmo genre. we are just having a hard time getting over this theme park bump (imho) at the moment. But i believe sooner or later it will come full circle. Then later on go back to theme parks, so forth and so on... Just when that will be, no one can predict lol.