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.

[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.

[Dreamer]

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.

This x100. It costs so much to make a MMORPG that has any chance of making a dent in the currently oversaturated market that publishers are scared witless to do anything outside the tried and true Everquest/Warcraft formula. Even with the popularity of Eve Online, Star Citizen still had to be crowdfunded.

Players who have been playing this genre for several years now are utterly sick of this formula, hence the the high turnover rates you see in pretty much every MMORPG released in the past 5-6 years.

[Jarlax]

The communities have driven these games so that all of the content created from level 1-50 "or whatever the cap is" pretty much worthless, and takes only a few days or weeks to complete. A byproduct of this is the max-level grind currency from x-event/group content to be rewarded with items, and we all know how monotonous this can be. Communities and the majority of the players don't like it when it takes months to achieve max level; because, the perception is "that's when the game starts".Developers want to make successful games so they try to cater to the playerbase or what they "think" they want in the game.

This is the problem with the newer MMO's in that tremendous resources are put into creating "trivial" content that will be skipped, ignored, exploited, "whatever"; because, the way the game is set up it makes this content trivial after you outlevel it.

EQNext I believe has the solution and will be a genre changer just like it was when it was first released in 1999. I say this because I have literally watched in the last 15 or so years how the communities have driven a lot of the so called "grindy" stuff out of the games and we have this grind-to-win currency systems now otherwise the games would be completed by players in a week.

What makes it so hard to create a game like this? It's simple people don't like to level up, but they do like to get new gear and progress their characters that way. We have the crowd that scours every instance for exploits and calls them "fair gameplay". The crowd that says "I don't have time" and actually want the currency grind with "speed run" type gameplay. We have the ones that think things should be earned over longer peroids , and by only completing top end content. Then we have the PvP crowd that wants their own gear, but they shouldn't have to participate in any other content in the game to be "on par" with everyone else that does. Then we have the "nerf that class" PvPer who thinks everyone is OP but them and demands nerfs to other classes until their class is like playing "god of war".

The way they are changing this is simple, and brilliant, no more levels. So why didn't a lot of us run dungeons when this game released? You didn't need the items because they would be outleveled fast, and in this case fates were faster, in other games the community finds the weakest content with best reward and grinds that until they complete whatever goal is in mind. So what will no levels do?

It turns the game into a gear grind only.

So you cant grind mobs to max level; because there is no max level, and you cant outlevel items.

No static content, so you can't "grind" the same spawns over and over, or camp that boss, all mobs have dynamic AI and they will move around the entire world, so no more "dungeon grind for currency"

Sense there are no levels your going to WANT to find that nice piece of gear hidden down in the bottom of that dungeon, and not skip it; because, there wont be a point your not going to "outlevel the content"

Action style combat, no more "click that guy and mash buttons" and 44 different classes with a max of 8 ability slots, and the ability to cross class abilities.

This will be a game you log into and meet with friends to go "adventure around" not max your comms for the week; because, mobs wont ever be in the same place, they will move to different areas of the world if they don't like that spot for one reason or another, and getting camped and killed over and over is one of them. So YOU may have found that uber mob that dropped that awesome sword, but when you bring your friends to show them where he was........he probably wont be there anymore.

I can't wait for this to finally be released, SoE have scrapped this project 3 or 4 times in the last 8 or so years and started over until finally they have something that is NOT going to be the same crap we have been playing for 15 years now that started with EQ1.

[Doo]

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.

Sad but true.

[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.

[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.

[Magis]

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.

This is the best post I have seen to why the level grind is important! I'd say it's the game, not the genre. The game has chosen the mainstream route, which has been shown to not retain people, but does give a quick boost in population at launch.

I won't say it's the genre, otherwise games like EVE online wouldn't be as popular as it is.