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

[ApolloGenX]

It's not the game or the genre- It's the Market

The market for these games has changed. A long tiem ago there used to be threads about the "stigma" of gaming. Well, that has changed a lot and gaming is more mainstream now- and with it the market has changed.

As much as I loathe to admit it- A lot of us "older" gamers are becoming aged out of the market. We have connections with ideas the market is determining to be outdated and undesirable. It used to be a niche market- Now, we are still a niche market- but there is a larger mainstream market. That is where the most money is, and that is the target audience.

[Alexander_Dragonfang]

This is te typical vertical vs horizontal progression and character development.
FFXIV was always planned as a pure vertical progression with plain normal character development, not liking this, means you shouldn`t even buyed the game in the first place, is like buying a CoD disliking FPSs.

There are games that have tried the horizontal progression and they are a mess because they can`t keep people interested for too long, mayor example of this is GW2 which has been forced to introduce some level of verticality.

Anyway, if you want to enjoy a MMORPG first of all, you need to be patient and read, read those quest a laught a lot of them, most people just click past everything and then complains the game is not fun because there is nothing fun on it when they passed thousands of lines of well writted content. Specially in FFXIV.

8 years ago people complained about mob grinding leveling, now the complain about quest grind leveling, this genre is not bad, MMORPG are great, the problem is that 90% are not true RPG players so they dont have what a RPG player needs to have to enjoy this games. Patience, dedication and a taste for slowpaced rewarding progress. Maybe the only problem with this industry is that is trying to appeal to that 90%... Thank god there is still hope in games like this.

[Mintyfresh]

and read, *SNIP* writted content. .
8 years ago *SNIP* Maybe the only problem with this industry is that is trying to appeal to that 90%... Thank god there is still hope in games like this.

I agree with what you say but you have to evolve your way of thinking.

Demographics of people who play the game have changed.
If it wasn't for the revenue from the 90% maybe the game wouldn't even go past it's initial development stage.

I find it very refreshing when I find some quests with something witty, but if you are asking me to pay attention to every quest that is asking me to kill 5 coyotes, 6 ladybugs and 7 crabs, no, ty!
How about NOT designing quests like that.
(cont.)

[Doo]

Making everything instant gratification has made end game unbearable. If you don't beat hard content in one or two tries, players rage quit or you get harassed if you don't measure up to someones expectations. It makes end game very non casual friendly. FFXIV was slower pace and everything was force grouping so players tend to have more patience and more friendlier. Now it's if I don't get my shiny in one or two tries I'm buying it, rage quit, or harass the "bad player".

[Niko_Kishiko]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvK8fua6O64

[Royze]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvK8fua6O64

Its encouraging to see that the desires to move away from WoW clones is gaining popularity.
Discouraging to see you only got 1 like for this great post.

[Oleander]

The game is only 5 months old. I'm not ready to cry foul and give up just yet.

[Kallera]

The game is only 5 months old. I'm not ready to cry foul and give up just yet.

I've heard this song before. It was overplayed on the radio.

The reason the dev team is planning on nerfing the current content(and will likely do so in the future as new content is pushed out) is because they want retention. instead of many different hubs of content like in MMOs of yore, now there is one hub of major content, with minor quests near teleports, or a hop skip and jump away.

MMOs back in the day had more than just hubs; even if some eventually included them in later in development, there was still the experience and feel of a world, with variety and activities. These days, something like Cracktusk(http://www.angelfire.com/games2/eqfo...s/zones/sk.htm) would be considered a bug, or the nights in Qufim(FFXI-ROZ)would be too stressful. "Blind" could reduce your accuracy or make you literally NOT SEE, but no, that halts progression. In the name of "progression" Zones are trimmed and walled off, monster and status effects defanged, everything is tucked away behind their own little box--oh I'm sorry, instances. Everyone has their comfort zone, I'm not asking for free for all PVP, but a world of no danger and ephemeral vertical progression, you can't help but see the hamster wheel a little clearer.

[DSX]

I think the fact that we have like 5 of these threads on the front page at any given time (and that outside these forums, most of the discussion of this game is negative) speaks volumes about the shaky foundation FFXIV is sitting on.

Even if the people complaining ARE a minority (for the time being), they're typically the same people who paid for FFXI for nearly a decade. It's generally not a good idea to piss off your loyal customers who have proven to be a reliable source of income in favor of a fickle-minded mainstream crowd who generally jump from one flavor-of-the-month to the next.

What are SE going to be left with when those customers hop on the next shiny new MMO to come out (the same way they hop on the next shiny piece of gear and forget about the last one)? The older players who they've now lost the confidence of.

SE made the decision to try and grab 2 million subs for a year or two at best, instead of 3-500 thousand for a decade. Bad business move, but investors and stockholders are completely blind to long term sustainability and only want to see immediate gratification and returns, just like the customers they're pandering to.

This is correct. The sad thing is the investors in most cases does not have the slightest idea about gaming in general or the gamers their company is making games for. They rely on finance department for their decision but the finance department also have no idea about the gamers or the gaming culture or what those games their company makes means to the gaming universe.

So we get a lot of games canned or disapproved and a lot of wasted money in the process of making most of the gaming big titles on stuff like getting a famous actors/actresses to do voice overs and pay them gazillions then blame the gamers for not paying it back. In a lot of cases the players actually pay enough to cover all the money wasted by the investors and financial division on stuff that will not raise the game quality (but they believe will bring more of those average joes/janes people to buy the game) but the profit margin is not satisfactory to these financial departments (which they look at movies profits in a lot of cases to compare) and thus to the investors when they hear from them (bu but we think this should make 250% profit but it only made cost + 60 million dollars we should find more ways to convince average joe/jane to buy our games ).

Because of that we got the disaster that is FFXIV ver1 AND because of that we have now FFXIV ver2 and they are on a roll we will see what we get next. The talent that make the games does not get to realize their vision but instead be made to realize what the investors and the financial decision think will make profit (But in the case of FFXIV ver2 I think (I could be wrong) this is also what Yoshi-P team like to make themselves too, maybe this is one of the reasons he got chosen to man the helm for FFXIV ver2 project).

I've heard this song before. It was overplayed on the radio.

The reason the dev team is planning on nerfing the current content(and will likely do so in the future as new content is pushed out) is because they want retention. instead of many different hubs of content like in MMOs of yore, now there is one hub of major content, with minor quests near teleports, or a hop skip and jump away.

MMOs back in the day had more than just hubs; even if some eventually included them in later in development, there was still the experience and feel of a world, with variety and activities. These days, something like Cracktusk(http://www.angelfire.com/games2/eqfo...s/zones/sk.htm) would be considered a bug, or the nights in Qufim(FFXI-ROZ)would be too stressful. "Blind" could reduce your accuracy or make you literally NOT SEE, but no, that halts progression. In the name of "progression" Zones are trimmed and walled off, monster and status effects defanged, everything is tucked away behind their own little box--oh I'm sorry, instances. Everyone has their comfort zone, I'm not asking for free for all PVP, but a world of no danger and ephemeral vertical progression, you can't help but see the hamster wheel a little clearer.

The dangerous world is one of the best allies of any MMORPG. It does wonders on how the player base look at the game. But sadly the companies do not want anything in the game that could scare the average joe/jane away once they set foot in the game world.

[Jonjon]

The game is only 5 months old. I'm not ready to cry foul and give up just yet.

No it isn't. It launched in 2010. Besides this is a terrible argument. Especially when you can see the developing view of the game based on what came before, what is currently, and what is coming. There is a pattern and a good chunk have noticed.
Also as evidenced by hundreds of 40+ member friends lists that are getting emptier every day.

I have seen people throw out terms like "Them Park" and "Sandbox" in regards to games, and honestly I had no idea what these referred to so I looked it up and I realize what the problem has been with a lot of recent MMOs, at least for me. The industry is starting to realize that theme park MMOs are just terrible. People burn through them far to fast, FF14 2.0 is no different.

A lot of gamers are tired of playing a game like it is on rails. This game is especially bad in that there is only one direction.


Luckily the MMO scape seems to be shifting. Companies are realizing that Theme Park, play on rails games are a bad move. They sought to capitalize on WoW's success when not even Blizzard could hope to replicate that, and while that landed them some decent short term revenue, it would never last. The shift is going towards a balance between sandbox and open world. Players still want a game story, but they want the ability to play that story how they wish and have the ability to design their own adventure.