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

[synaesthetic]

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.

And they want new players.

New players mean more money.

Square-Enix is a business. Now, what do businesses exist for?

That's right! Making money.

Seriously, are you naturally this dense or did you practice first?

I think the fact that we have like 5 of these threads on the front page at any given time

Just goes to show you how many people on the internet derive their pleasure from seeing other people in misery. Is pissing on lowbies and your e-peen really so important that you're that utterly terrified that those "filthy casuals" will actually be able to see the story bits of The Binding Coil of Bahamut up to Turn 5 after patch 2.2?

[Mintyfresh]

I don't know how to take the nerfing of content.
One part of me says that it's good, it gives more people access to content and will help retain more players(more stuff to do = players staying)
On the other hand, it's worrisome to see it being nerfed so early.

Unless the only way to retain players is to create content(that can be eaten up rapidly) and nerfing it very soon, which means their dev cycle for content has to e very very short.
Perhaps they need to work on how to make the game last longer, i.e work on longevity of the game.

[synaesthetic]

I don't know how to take the nerfing of content.
One part of me says that it's good, it gives more people access to content and will help retain more players(more stuff to do = players staying)
On the other hand, it's worrisome to see it being nerfed so early.

Unless the only way to retain players is to create content(that can be eaten up rapidly) and nerfing it very soon, which means their dev cycle for content has to e very very short.
Perhaps they need to work on how to make the game last longer, i.e work on longevity of the game.

Their dev cycle is very short. They're releasing major patches every three months. The only major MMO I've ever heard of that released major content patches faster than that was RIFT.

[Nysneirdre]

And they want new players.

New players mean more money.

Square-Enix is a business. Now, what do businesses exist for?

That's right! Making money.

Seriously, are you naturally this dense or did you practice first?

Did you actually read Zfz post or did you just roll in here to drop some insults to increase your post count? Zfz makes a lot of great points on why these current MMOs loose so many players so quickly. Of course the company wants to make money but wouldn't it be a good idea to retain those players for the long run? MMOs released these days seem to have a massive spike in numbers for the first couple months then crash. Why do you think that is?

[Alistaire]

@ Nysneirdre: Exactly. Also, old content doesn't need to be nerfed; the playerbase as a whole is already getting better at all of it as is. And aside from the skill perspective, they will naturally get more tools to deal with the content as new gear/jobs become available.

So rather than even say "hey guys, we're nerfing coil", they really should have just said "hey guys, we're adding these drops and jobs and raising myth cap and adding philo bonuses etc" which will effectively nerf content by itself because of players having more tools to deal with it.

They could have easily just left coil at "we're removing the weekly limit", leave out the part about making it easier, and it'd be easier just because of the weekly limit removal, aside from whatever new gear Hard Mode halatali/brayflox etc give us. Even Crystal Tower falls under this idea.

[synaesthetic]

Did you actually read Zfz post or did you just roll in here to drop some insults to increase your post count? Zfz makes a lot of great points on why these current MMOs loose so many players so quickly. Of course the company wants to make money but wouldn't it be a good idea to retain those players for the long run? MMOs released these days seem to have a massive spike in numbers for the first couple months then crash. Why do you think that is?

None of Zfz's points are good, because the only thing Zfz, and players like Zfz, want is to block "lesser" people from accessing content. They somehow derive pleasure from seeing other people unable to enjoy and experience content.

There are many good reasons to nerf deprecated content. If it's not nerfed, then new players, less skilled players, players with less time to play, players who don't actually enjoy challenging content will be left further and further behind. They will become quickly locked out of much of the game's content.

What do you think will happen next? Actually wait, I'll go ahead and answer for you, since thinking is clearly too hard for you. The people locked behind deprecated tiers that continually stack up, making playing catch-up more and more unlikely, will simply give up and unsubscribe. Square-Enix will, as a result, lose money, and this will damage their ability to continually release new content in a timely manner.

[Mortikhan]

What do you think will happen next? Actually wait, I'll go ahead and answer for you, since thinking is clearly too hard for you. The people locked behind deprecated tiers that continually stack up, making playing catch-up more and more unlikely, will simply give up and unsubscribe. Square-Enix will, as a result, lose money, and this will damage their ability to continually release new content in a timely manner.

As much as this might be true...the same will happen in reverse if players are not challenged enough and can run to end game, complete what they want to complete and push the "I won FFXIV" button. They will simply go spend their time and money elsewhere until new content comes out (2-3 patches later). There has and always will be separation for those who give effort and spend time and those who do neither. SE needs to find a balance for both groups. That will be the real innovation that the MMO genre is looking for.

[synaesthetic]

As much as this might be true...the same will happen in reverse if players are not challenged enough and can run to end game, complete what they want to complete and push the "I won FFXIV" button. They will simply go spend their time and money elsewhere until new content comes out (2-3 patches later). There has and always will be separation for those who give effort and spend time and those who do neither. SE needs to find a balance for both groups. That will be the real innovation that the MMO genre is looking for.

That happens regardless, but the number of people who do this is far, far smaller. Reducing churn is an important part of keeping an MMO profitable, but it's rank foolishness to cater to the top 5% of players at the expense of the bottom 95%. Old MMOs got away with doing this in the late 90s and early 2000s because the genre was very, very niche and only the most dedicated players even really cared to begin with.

For example, I started playing FFXI back around the NA launch and then I left for World of Warcraft. I decided to give FFXI another chance shortly after Wings of the Goddess came out. I was stuck behind the Chains of Promathia roadblock literally for months. Not a single day went by where I wasn't thinking about just quitting, hanging it up, after spending the sixth day in a row shouting in Jeuno and Whitegate for hours and hours to try and get people to help me. I literally had to pay people to help me through the CoP missions so I could access Al'Taieu and learn all of my blue magic. I may have stuck it out, but I was really close to saying screw it and unsubbing. I'm sure there were far more people who did unsub than those who just stuck it out, and all of that is lost revenue.

That's the sort of fate new players would have waiting for them if they didn't nerf and remove restrictions from old content. Because they do it's fairly easy for new players to catch up and be current. This is good for everyone, because it means endgame companies can more easily recruit new members, fill spots, more people are engaged with the current content and the world is more lively as a result.

[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.

[Despite]

What do you think will happen next? Actually wait, I'll go ahead and answer for you, since thinking is clearly too hard for you. The people locked behind deprecated tiers will simply give up and unsubscribe.

History has shown otherwise. In WoW 90 some odd % of players never saw AQ, BT, etc and yet this didn't stop them from gaining over 10 millions subs by the end of Burning Crusade. Burning Crusade era WoW had punishing dungeon difficulty and raid attunements. Difficult / gated content doesn't hurt the game. If the game is good enough (which this isn't) it doesn't matter how far off the carrot is.
As far as I can tell, this game is so damned shallow and poorly designed that they are knee jerk reacting and scrambling to keep subs. Nerf the content so fast and many veteren MMO players will leave.
What you're left with are the diehards, unskilled casuals, FF fanboys and curious newcomers.
Doesn't look too promising at this point.