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

[astrobearthe2nd]

I think SE just doesn't want to learn from Tanaka's success.
In 5 years from now, Tanaka will probably be "that game producer that created that legendary game, our most succesfull title ever", rather than "Mr. Barance".

And Yoshi will probably be "that guy that tried to copy wow"

Learn from Tanaka... he created Japan's most succesfull MMO ever. If FFXI was marketed better, and supported better in none- JP communities, it might have rivaled WoW. But SE never put any money into marketing it outside Japan.

so tanaka was the producer for ff7? because that is SE greatest game ever.

edit. not personal opinion (i like ff12 way better), but public opinion.

[Genesis88]

so tanaka created ff7? because that is SE greatest game ever.

edit. not personal opinion (i like ff12 way better), but public opinion.

I agree Tanaka was original. He worked on alot of older FF titles, chrono cross, the successful ff11 and many others. Sad that he was thrown under the bus. The original crew wanted to steer 1.0 from ffxi, so he let them work on it with minimal interferance. Yeah wasn't the SE president at the time wanted to rush the launch of 1.0?

[DSX]

I think the companies lost sight of the MMORPG genre audience, because they thought they could get more money out of another audience.
The result is the companies being slammed by this new audience that are much like hit and run type of thing.
the new audience: demand easy to complete content or take short time to complete or both (because they don't have the time to spend on anything demanding and do not want to "tress" mentally on anything in a "game") > hit the game on launch > because the company made the content easy to complete with short time investment as they demanded they streamroll through it all in a matter of weeks or less > the company finds itself in a tight spot where the speed of development can't match how fast their easy content can be completed (some of them rehash content to buy more time) > this audience get bored waiting and leave instead as a result of boredom with the content they already completed. Of course a new game coming out too could speed up the process of leaving the game as they already finished what this game has and there is a completely new experience in that new game.

oh man i remember in xi when just seeing someone in full rdm af was drool-able and worshipy. If you wear af here it's a laughable and kickable offense. I -cried- happy tears when I got my rdm af2 hat after years of trying for it. Now the only thing im missing is full BIS gear for my already ilv 90 jobs and that's not that awesome as 80% of the population has it. Im not into fates so I haven't touched Arcanist yet and I miss exp parties.. not fate parties where the whm casts stone and never heals and the pt is 7 pld/wars. Where challenge isn't lag or if you can get to odin in the 1 minute hes up... Ex primals were a step in the right direction but even then I don't really find Titan fun at all.. more like crossing your fingers and hoping that this 89th party of the week has what it takes to dodge. This isn't the type of hard I hoped for

True.
and I like your sig about FFXI crafting

I think SE just doesn't want to learn from Tanaka's success.
In 5 years from now, Tanaka will probably be "that game producer that created that legendary game, our most succesfull title ever", rather than "Mr. Barance".

And Yoshi will probably be "that guy that tried to copy wow"

Learn from Tanaka... he created Japan's most succesfull MMO ever. If FFXI was marketed better, and supported better in none- JP communities, it might have rivaled WoW. But SE never put any money into marketing it outside Japan.

Tanaka put tons of depth in FFXI from aggro system, skill levels, magic, sub jobs, etc. he also said FFXIV 1.0 was not ready for launch.

I agree Tanaka was original. He worked on alot of older FF titles, chrono cross, the successful ff11 and many others. Sad that he was thrown under the bus. The original crew wanted to steer 1.0 from ffxi, so he let them work on it with minimal interferance. Yeah wasn't the SE president at the time wanted to rush the launch of 1.0?

That is all true.
Let me add that also SE refused to let tanaka creat a new game engine for FFXIV (just like he did for FFXI) and instead handed him the game engine for FF13 (yes an offline single player game) and told him to make due with it.

[indira]

I think SE just doesn't want to learn from Tanaka's success.
In 5 years from now, Tanaka will probably be "that game producer that created that legendary game, our most succesfull title ever", rather than "Mr. Barance".

And Yoshi will probably be "that guy that tried to copy wow"

Learn from Tanaka... he created Japan's most succesfull MMO ever. If FFXI was marketed better, and supported better in none- JP communities, it might have rivaled WoW. But SE never put any money into marketing it outside Japan.

Tanaka put tons of depth in FFXI from aggro system, skill levels, magic, sub jobs, etc. he also said FFXIV 1.0 was not ready for launch.

[Ri_ri]

I hate most mechanics of this game's bosses. They are unbalanced towards healers and tanks, punishing (one wrong move = die + weakness debuff which will inevitably lead to a wipe thanks to low damage), action oriented (on a game whose netcode can't handle it), and uncreative.

I'm finding myself getting more and more stressed over this game's battle content if I'm not playing with friends. They pratically encourage the "toxic behaviour" many talks of. Also the typical "experienced" (which actually means "don't fart on the wrong time so you don't wipe us").

It's like I'm walking on a tight rope and when I finish it, I feel relief instead of happiness.

I obviously can't tell if people are leaving because of this, but trying to target this game to casual audiences, then making bosses whose solution to any problem is "that person died", obviously won't go well.

Honestly, the only problem with Yoshida's view is how afraid he is from RMT. Botters gonna bot regardless, don't make the game bland because of it.

Some people like crafting, some like grinding, some like camping for bosses... but everyone is forced into dungeon-crawling. Over and over.

[Doo]

I'm finding myself getting more and more stressed over this game's battle content if I'm not playing with friends.

Yup I pretty much only do content mainly with friends since a majority of the time if you don't know a fight 100 percent or if you goof up, you get players that cry and rage. Even then end game content is uncreative and just the same ol' unforgiving rotation and phase style.

I had one guy in Titan hm today that was spamming me with Esuna macros when I was raising a healer who died and getting ready to heal MB on a lower geared tank. Then he left the party along with his buddy. This type of stuff happens way too frequent.

[Rekujen]

Nothing went wrong, the problem are these forums.. people constantly stay on here and read nothing but negative comments about the game which in-turn, drags everyone's emotions down and they too, start hating the game.

What is the #1 reason people go to forums? to complain.

When you keep coming here to see complaint after complaint, over the dumbest things possible.. you slowly but surely start agreeing with most of the whingers. Take a step back and realize what you're getting yourself into and stay away from these forums as much as you can, you will find yourself enjoying the game a lot more.

Like I said, nothing "went wrong" if your friends are quitting, move on, find other friends.

I haven't noticed a single decline on my server, in fact I'm noticing more and more people online these days.

[Duelle]

I'll speak for myself. People don't seem to remain interested unless there's a ton of content, which isn't going to come anytime soon given the relative age of the game. The unhappiest of the bunch are the FFXI players and those who go out of their way to demonize modern design (like the people who can't wrap their brains around why lockouts work the way they do).

That said, I've managed to pace myself in such a way that I still have stuff to do (PLD is still my only 50, slowly leveling alt classes, still haven't done EM/coil--out of lack of interest in EM and coil, no crafting classes to 50 nor gathering classes). Hell, one of the friends I brought to this game just managed to get to the point where he can run AK and WP. This is someone who signed up at launch, mind you.

Also keep in mind some people will drop off and return for patches, while others stay for the long haul. This would still be true even if we had four 24-man raids instead of just Coil and CT.

[Risx]

2-3 months ago: "Yeah I'm a hardcore player I log in once a week for about an hour to do turn 1-5"
Now: "Yeah I'm a casual player I log in once a week for about an hour to do turn 1-5"

Thank you based Yoshi for turning everyone into a casual in the end. Grats on finally catching upto the curve though.

[Malamasala]

The source of all problems is that we have people playing a game they do not enjoy.

It is a fact that if the game play is not fun enough for you to do dungeons after you hit your reward cap, then you are not playing for fun but playing for the sake of playing and complaining for the sake of complaining.

Also imagine if they "fix" the crafting economy. Suddenly these people will "enjoy" farming all day and kill the same monsters over and over for months. But right now that they are not forced to do it, they won't do it because it is boring.

In summary, FFXIV is boring so it has to fixed so we are forced to be bored instead of choose to be bored, because we won't choose it.