What went wrong? Is it the game or the grenre?

[Red_Panda]

Over the past two or three weeks I have started to watch my free company members log on less and less and we have gone from having 3-4 active coil groups down to one if we are lucky. I myself am on my 5th job just to give me something to do. I am still enjoying the game and have plenty left to do but it just feels like the community as a whole is shrinking day by day.

I don't know the reason, I think it's probably a mix of a lot of things, the server delay issues are my most major gripe but it feels like the whole economy and crafting system is self defeating. Our FC was so excited when housing was announced and even though the price was high we really had the goal to get the largest house. But now that everyone wants a house people aren't spending money and almost nothing is profitable to farm or sell anymore.

I have ran CT 17 times since the patch and have yet to even see the new housing item drop, while this isn't exactly a problem I am glad it is very rare but if what I hear is true that it takes your item for the week I don't see many FC's ever getting this because people are not going to want to give up their one peice of loot for the week.

I really want this game to succeed, FFXI was my first mmo and I was so happy when a "sequal" was created. I am just worried that SE tryed to ape the 900 lb gorilla in the room too much instead of going their own way. If 2.2 doesn't come soon and give a lot of new stuff I fear for the longevity of our FC.

I don't really have a specific goal for this thread, I am not trying to complain about the game itself as much as just general frustration with seeing my friends lose interest in the game so quickly and what if anything can be done about it?

[Cigaran]

Going by what I've seen with the people I know who are playing, it's not so much the game as it is the players. Despite the flexibility and depth offered by a single character being able to level up all Classes & Jobs, many seem to have no interest in doing so. I know quite a few who have only gotten the Classes that support their main Job to 15 and have never gone back. Those that seem to have that view seem to be after little more than getting the best possible gear as fast as possible. Once they've got that character geared out, they consider themselves done and stop playing. There are also a few who at some point along that grind got bored and simply walked away having burnt themselves out.

[Tupsi]

It's the genre and game - They took the "safe route" which has been done to death and back and quite frankly..leaves much to be desired. MMOs and gaming in general have stagnated because if a developer tries anything out of the box or unique the game fails because it's not "the same crap as every other game". For example people would refuse ARR if it wasn't a generic Quest Grind and nothing but Dungeon Instances type of MMO because that's "industry standard" now.

Of course you'll have people state the game is highly successful and the most popular MMO to ever exist and there's absolutely no problems with it, but those people tend to be the ones who love this style of MMO to begin with.

[Zfz]

I also don't like this quest grind. Most quests are just chores anyway.

I prefer the design where you grind on mobs to level up, and quests are hard and few with real story, that reward significant stuff, which you aim for. The whole focus on end-game is being overdone now in ARR, I think, allowing people to level cap in only few days. The RPG part of the MMORPG got lost in the process. I think the game should strive to provide a journey first, a journey people can enjoy, not a taxi ride where people find the shortest route most efficient way to do everything and skip anything that isn't efficient.

Build a journey people enjoy, and when people get to the end of the jouney, then add the "end-game" content. This way, those who arrive at the end-game pleasantly find more to do at end-game. But the way it is now, people want nothing of the journey, if possible they want to start at the end-game already; and they are not to blame, because that thinking is encouraged by the current game design.

"I wanna quickly level to 50 so I can get started with..." is the problem with this game.

Also, the speed at which people can level decides the speed at which people expect to attain their goals, I think. If it took a good 3 months just to get to level cap, one can be sure people won't be expecting to get their relic in one night. They'd expect the relic quest to be so epic it takes weeks to finish.

Which brings out those who sneer, "I have a life I don't want to waste 40 hours a week on a game". But that is only a problem if that time is really wasted. Does it matter if you're level 50 tackling Binding Coils of Bahamut, or your level 17~20 tackling Halatali that has the same difficulty as Turn 1? So what if it takes 2 months to level up to 50? It is only a problem (a "waste of time") if the game itself is designed to "start at 50".

Imagine those who don't want difficult content can just ignore dungeons and slowly grind their way to 50. Those who love the so-called end-game content, can experience that "end-game experience" all throughout their leveling time. With level sync, they also get to re-experience all these dungeons the way it was, with new friends, or a friend's alt class. Imagine having 12 "end-game dungeons" already at launch, because every dungeon in the game is of "end-game" quality.

The current design makes it very easy for a new player to catch up. Which is exactly the problem. The game itself is treating its own content like throw-away trash.

[Gramul]

It's because the genre has just become one game repeated forever.

Uh what you're seeing is normal. No MMO retains a majority of its initial userbase after the first few months. Games like this one are a revolving door where old players are replaced by new players.

I really don't think this should be preferable.

[Ruethryl]

It's the genre and game - They took the "safe route" which has been done to death and back and quite frankly..leaves much to be desired. MMOs and gaming in general have stagnated because if a developer tries anything out of the box or unique the game fails because it's not "the same crap as every other game". For example people would refuse ARR if it wasn't a generic Quest Grind and nothing but Dungeon Instances type of MMO because that's "industry standard" now.

Of course you'll have people state the game is highly successful and the most popular MMO to ever exist and there's absolutely no problems with it, but those people tend to be the ones who love this style of MMO to begin with.

Funny thing about that and the history of video games... something like that happened early on (think Atari).. the game market crashed until something new and innovative came along to revive it.. it'd take something similar to shift the MMO market at this point.

[Marzapan]

I'm more a fan of sandbox games. This game is themepark.
I'm not much for leveling alts. Once I see a dungeon/zone, I'm pretty much done w/ it. To me, doing content over w/ a new class is not new content. Recycling dungeons/bosses also, imho, is not new content to me. Although I understand how some people view it as such.
Usually I like to craft, but there seems little use for it in this game. I love housing... we know how that has gone so far.
The world is very closed, corridored, or however you wish to put it.
Coil lockout is frustrating and unsatisfying.
Loot tier system doesn't make sense to me. Why do we get tokens for i90 gear in i50 dungeons?
Leveling is WAY too fast.
It's not hard to see why people have gotten tired of FF XIV already.

[Subucnimorning]

Game and genre in general has gone too casual where you barely need to put any effort in to be end game, there is nothing special about having all content cleared currently. All but Twintania are puggable with 100% randoms. I miss the days of EQ1 where getting items or even max level was an accomplishment in itself. You could tell who was good and not by the gear they had, it was okay when not everyone was on the same raid content and people went at their own pace whether that was casual or hardcore, not everyone had to be the same. It gets tiring the mindset that everyone has to clear everything with ease.

[Bufkus]

Uh what you're seeing is normal. No MMO retains a majority of its initial userbase after the first few months. Games like this one are a revolving door where old players are replaced by new players.

[Thorauku]

So much for casual catering IMO.