Keeping the game basic for new players?

[Magis]

It's strange how focused they are on "new players" when they have a huge chunk of current players that are paying them right now. You'd think they'd want to keep them hooked and focus the game around them, especially in the next expansion.

[DenariusJay]

It's strange how focused they are on "new players" when they have a huge chunk of current players that are paying them right now. You'd think they'd want to keep them hooked and focus the game around them, especially in the next expansion.

Unfortunately, with the way the MMO market is nowadays, you can't rely on your current players for revenue - too many gamers bounce around nowadays, I read an article a few years back about the life-span of an average subscription, it hovers around 2-3 months, then the player leaves and the return rate is very low. So if you cater to your current crop by the time you get them what they want, most will have already moved onto something else, specially nowadays with all the F2P mmo's that saturate the market. Gotta keep the door revolving and the only way to do that is to focus on new players.

[Magis]

Unfortunately, with the way the MMO market is nowadays, you can't rely on your current players for revenue - too many gamers bounce around nowadays, I read an article a few years back about the life-span of an average subscription, it hovers around 2-3 months, then the player leaves and the return rate is very low. So if you cater to your current crop by the time you get them what they want, most will have already moved onto something else, specially nowadays with all the F2P mmo's that saturate the market. Gotta keep the door revolving and the only way to do that is to focus on new players.

Is that due to the player base, or the way MMOs have been developed now? It seems content has become so basic and easy that players blow through it in a single month causing down time between patches. With a lack of some large overarching goal (cause taking time to get something is hard), players quit until the next patch due to having nothing to do. Heck, this makes sense giving your time frame of 2-3 months.... the time a patch takes to come out. I recall new raids in Vanilla WoW taking a month or longer to clear (some of it was because Blizz put up rooster blocks IE: BWL), and was appalled that the Naxx remake was cleared in what... 3 days? How is that even sustainable? Heck, when XIV launched, people complained of boredom in 2.0 and the excuse was "you blew through the content". Except this was being said 3-4 months down the line. The fact was one of the biggest tools MMO devs have to stretch content out was thrown out: leveling. It could have set the pace for people, and let the devs focus on a balanced end-game, rather than this "catch-up" that is happening. Heck, CT1 was suppose to lead into Coil day 1, but got delayed to 2.1, and now it's alternating ever patch (this may have been the plan from the start, so I may be wrong).

It doesn't help that this game's difficulty makes the grinds become more mind numbing and the super fast verticle progression make the rewards meaningless. This gives a terrible combo of: This content is boring and I don't feel motivated to do it. I myself have been jumping from thing to thing trying to keep myself entertained, doing high-level BTN now.

While that is true. Everyone else also had a MMORPG that was their first. And somehow, we handled it well.

I would be kind of insulted if I was a new player and see how dumb they consider new players.

Indeed. There are games with much more complicated system than XIV yet many players of all types play them (casuals and hardcore). SE shouldn't dumb the content down for new players, rather... they should uses system to help new players learn. They did that well with the quests and tutorial system, but still don't have faith the new players aren't complete idiots?